(KC 1900 Series #18)

(Top images are just three of the sketches Norman Rockwell tried out for the painting, The Kansas City Spirit.)

We’ve already demonstrated that the phrase “Kansas City Spirit,” did not originate with the Convention Hall of 1900, but besides dispelling that misconception, I’d hoped to find a fresher, more pertinent meaning than seemed evident in the original phrase. It turns out that the deeper meaning was there all along, but to the modern ears is seems a glib slogan. In truth, the whole totality of the Convention Hall experience – from building to ashes to building again – had long ago turned a glib saying into a community’s credo.

It wouldn’t be until three years after the fire that someone first tried to define and describe the Kansas City Spirit, beyond its use as a mere slogan. The man who took the simple slogan and gave it the form of a manifesto was E.M. Clendening. In 1903, as (still) Secretary for the Commercial Club, he had been asked to address a large group of Indianapolis community leaders and businessmen. The banquet was convened as part of building interest in the construction of an Indianapolis hall. Clendening had been invited by his friend and former Commercial Club member, Hugh McGowan, now a resident of Indianapolis. McGowan had been involved in the Convention Hall project, but he knew only Clendening was in a position to know the real story, all the tricks and tips.

Clendening noted early in his speech that he recognized he was being asked to respond to question, “How did you do it?” He went on to say that he knew what the gathering really wanted, the answer to the question, “How did you get the money.” In sharing this in his speech, Clendening admitted he could have made an easy answer of it, telegraphing back to his McGowan, the glib answer of, “We did everything, and we did everybody,” for which he got a big laugh. But Clendening quickly changed the tone by adding, “or I might have said we laid awake at night thinking what we would do the next day.”

Clendening’s speeches show him to be a strong and clever speaker, adept at framing a story, and knowing the moment to set the hook, persuasion-wise. Here, the “hook” was a call for the greater good. The quotes above and following come from the minutes of the Indianapolis gathering.

“Civic pride,” he declared. “Unless you have that element in your hearts so deeply rooted that it will make you cheerful donors to a public enterprise, unless you value citizenship far more than the luxuries and comforts it buys for yourself, and your own family, and unless you have realized that you owe something to the community in which you live, you cannot hope to make a success of the proposition which you are about to launch.”

When the spontaneous applause died down, he finished his civic pep talk by describing the Kansas City civic pride.

”I come from my own town, and there is one thing of which we are justly proud and that is civic pride. It has been inculcated into us, we preach it, we talk it, and we believe it, and we practice it. The building of a coliseum or convention hall such as Kansas City’s is not the work, gentlemen, of idle dreams, but in a modern phrase, it is the work of those who hustle while they wait.“

”These are sentiments that ring true to me. This speaks to me about a place where genuine individual connections to the community bring enthusiasm for seeing things done, to fix and especially to build for the community. It also heartens me that Clendening declares actual criteria for being able to claim one has civic pride. These lessons in character are particularly aimed at the well-to-do and those of any stature who believe they can only win if others lose. Clendening had spent his career with people who were genuine movers and shakers, and others that were opportunists and posers. He would have seen many examples of those both qualified and unqualified to earn the right to claim their civic pride based on his criteria. The Convention Hall experience taught him this, and helped him make clear his convictions around civic pride.

Five months later, Kansas City would face its next great challenge. The 1903 flood wiped out the west bottoms, from the train depot to the rails to all the parked rolling stock. It killed the livestock, wiped out a whole riverside neighborhood on the Kansas side, and dozens of businesses in the area. It also was just one chapter in a flooding event that covered north Kansas and Missouri, the Missouri river towns above Kansas City into Nebraska, and east all the way at least to Des Moines.

There would be more floods in 1951, 1977 and 1993. There had been a tornado in 1886, and there would be more in 1957, 1996, and 2000. There would be ice storms in 1984 and 2002.There were three major fires over one weekend in January 1978. Structural calamities happened in 1979 and 1981, And bombings in 1977 and 1988. Each of these devastating events grabbed the full attention of the area when they happened, and no doubt they were worthy of summoning the phrase “Kansas City Spirit” in some way to raise the local moral.

But if the Kansas City Spirit were only about the strength to get up and go again, it might as well be “We’re Kansas City Strong.” Sadly, too many American cities have had to adopt the “be strong” message, after devastating human and property loss in the wake of weather and violence. But time has shown that while good at rallying a community in the moment, the “be strong” messages ironically weaken over time.

The phrase, “Kansas City Spirit,” has been around since about 1870. The underlining meaning was crafted by E.M. Clendening, around 1903. But the image that will forever be associated with it came as a result of another flood, the flood of 1951. Locally, the damage is remembered as, like in 1903, centered in the West Bottoms. In reality, over a three-day period the flooding covered more than 300 miles along the Kansas and Missouri Rivers and their tributaries, from Wamego, KS east to St. Louis, Mo. Hallmark’s Founder, Joy C. Hall commissioned American’s most famous illustrator, Norman Rockwell, to capture the Kansas City spirit as a way of invoking the ideal and raising civic pride once again. The picture would be named “The Spirit of Kansas City.” Note the banner image at the top of this post. These are three of many of the sketches Rockwell produced and considered before selecting the final composition (below).

The image is remarkable on so many levels. First it is itself a collaboration, and the only collaborative painting of which Rockwell was ever a part. Collaboration has been a constant feature of the evolving definition of the Kansas City Spirit. The picture captures as best as can be hoped, the spectrum of industry that has – again in evolving forms – become the recognized character of Kansas City. Smoke stacks and sky scrapers fill the background. The airplane in the upper left heads west, while the locomotive in the lower right heads east. A shock of wheat, a stalk of corn, cattle in the pens make clear the foundational role of agriculture. Among the buildings, there’s a generic church, iconic government buildings with their deco touches, and some architectural references to the style of the Country Club Plaza. The only thing missing is the river. Given the prompting reason for the commission was the flood, its absence is understandable.

That background was painted by another Saturday Evening Post illustrator, John Atherton. But the central figure, “The Builder,” is classic Rockwell in detailed features, realistic rendering, and humanistic portrayal.  It’s easy to identify any number of fine traits in the man, but the ones that come to my mind are strength, confidence, insight, determination, and readiness. That’s just me. But I’m guessing most everyone’s word choices could fall under that larger category of “heroic.” Each of these ideas, or all of them, I would find easy to argue are part of the Kansas City Spirit.

But I take my final cue from one of the things E.M. Clendening said in his 1903 speech:

Unless you have [Civic Pride] in your hearts so deeply rooted that it will make you cheerful donors to a public enterprise, unless you value citizenship far more than the luxuries and comforts it buys for yourself, and your own family, and unless you have realized that you owe something to the community in which you live, you cannot hope to make a success of the proposition which you are about to launch.”

As an early definition of the Kansas City Spirit, Clendening’s words align well with what has become the institutionalized definition, assigned in the dedication of the Rockwell painting, by Joyce C. Hall. For me, this is what began as and still is the definitive idea of the Kansas City Spirit.

The Kansas City Spirit is something to be found in good men’s hearts that enables them to place service above self to accomplish the impossible.

Joyce C. Hall, 1951

∞∞∞∞

(KC 1900 Series: # 17)

(Photos above: A view of each of the 1900 Convention Halls, before and after the fire, left and right respectively)

More than a century has passed since the Convention Hall disaster and subsequent triumph. Such a time gap fairly begs for the chance to see what has happened to the stories that have been covered here.

Kansas City as a Crossroads

Kansas City has remained a crossroads of America, even as some of the modes of travel and the markets it served have changed dramatically. But more than changes in technology or economy, it was the proliferation of towns and cities popping up all over the west, tied directly to the growing networks of the railroads, that diminished Kansas City’s stature. The city remained important because of its central location, and the fact that its early prominence in transcontinental rail meant it had bigger and better infrastructure than most places. Some fifty years later, Kansas City further benefited from its place in the early development of the federal highway system. There is more to say about Kansas City’s economy during those years between then and now, but as to its identity as a crossroads, whatever has remained is a result of national interests in rails and roads.

Kansas City Leadership

In the Convention Hall story, Kansas City leadership is represented by the Commercial Club, the embodiment of collective private interests organized for civic improvements. Like most of the other like organizations around the country, the Commercial Club transformed into the Chamber of Commerce in 1916, and continues to this day. But it is not alone. As the city has grown, the number of organizations that participate in promotion, advocacy and economic development projects toward the betterment of the city has grown to an incalculable number. Some are focused by type of project, others by micro-geographies, and some continue to represent the entire metropolitan area. These changes are minor in the grand scheme of things, and the segmentation should, and often does, create greater efficiency and results. But one change is dramatic from the Commercial Club of the Convention Hall story – almost none of the efforts promoted by any of the modern organizations relies solely on private money contributed by citizens, and almost all of them rely heavily on public funding mechanisms.

The Mayor and the Chief

Less than two years following the Convention Hall fire, the man who had served the department in every capacity from mechanic to chief for thirty-one years, the man who had once been proclaimed the world’s greatest fireman, was fired by the Kansas City City Council, under the persuasive guidance of Mayor James L. Reed. Reed wanted to award a lucrative contract for a fire alarm system to the Gamewell Company. Hale refused. In his open letter in the Kansas City Star, Hale called the system unreliable and flimsily constructed, and further pointed out that Gamewell was charging Kansas City twice what Hale knew other cities to have paid. The inference about Reed and kickbacks, though implied, was clear.

Reed countered with his own accusations of Hale’s self-dealing. Unrelated to the current contract, Hale the inventor had worked with a firm that was a competitor of Gamewell on a new piece of firefighting equipment. Strangely, it was an accusation that was already well known to be false – Hale had long since relinquished his rights to his patents, and so was gaining no benefit from the competitor. But Reed also accused Hale of insubordination, and since the fire chief was a subordinate of the mayor, there was no arguing with that. The mayor’s firing was upheld by the city council in a vote of 11 to 3.

The Kansas City Star

William Rockhill Nelson died at the age of 74 in 1915. By then, the Kansas City Star was a thirty-five-year-old Kansas City institution. The leadership Nelson had installed long before his death served the paper well for many years, and the fact that the newspaper had been purchased by the employees continued to ensure its ties to the community would remain strong for decades. Over its life, the newspaper has won eight Pulitzers, the latest in 2022.

The newspaper was sold to a national media company in 1977, and since then it has been owned and operated by two other national media interests. In 2020, it was purchased through a bankruptcy auction by a hedge fund, part of a national trend of similar investment interests purchasing local newspapers that have wrecked havoc on the institutional of the local newspaper. Today, the Kansas City Star is a shadow of its former self. Its iconic headquarters has been developed into condominiums, its striking press building has been closed, and the newspaper’s printing has been outsourced to a firm in Des Moines, Iowa.

The Convention Hall

The Convention Hall continued to serve Kansas City for more than thirty years. It was a tumultuous three decades in the life of Kansas City, and America, and the Convention Hall provided a home for that. First and foremost, it fulfilled its original intent, and countless conventions, rallies, corporate and civic events and entertainments were held there. Some of them were more noteworthy than others, and two were famous. Between 1922 and 1924, the hall was rented by the Ku Klux Klan, for a series of meetings. In 1928, Kansas City played host to its second convention, this time for the Republic Party. Herbert Hoover was nominated, and went on to win the Presidency by defeating Governor Al Smith of New York.

The City had been working on a plan for civic improvements, a scheme that brought some order to public buildings by their location and their style. Municipal Auditorium was the first of the buildings to be constructed, followed shortly by City Hall and the Jackson County Courthouse, all still in operation today. The auditorium was built in the block directly south from the Convention Hall, and for a short time, the two sat across from one another, an architectural vignette of passing time. Before the hall was demolished, the “Century Box,” the time capsule placed in the stonework of the facade the night of the Century Ball, was removed and reinstalled in the auditorium.

On January 2, 2001, Kansas City held a special event for the opening of the box. Letting the usual New Year’s Eve events around town have their own moment, as the year changed into a new year, a new century and a new millennium in the same second. The box had been removed from its place in Municipal Auditorium, and brought to Union Station, a place that did not exist 100 year before but is now its own venerable venue. The public was invited, and the local dignitaries ran the program. In the lead was Mayor Kay Cronkite Waldo Barnes, the city’s first female mayor. The box was opened, and local archivists removed the contents carefully, one by one. The contents aligned with the accounts from one hundred years earlier, and judging from the reactions of those present, they achieved what the forefathers had hoped – a sense of how different the life and times of Kansas City were then. But nothing so clearly demonstrated that than when Mayor Kay Barnes opened the letter that Mayor James Reed wrote to his 20^th century counterpart. She opened the letter and upon reading it to the crowd, the first words she read captured the changes instantly.

“Dear Sir,” she read, and the crowd roared.

(KC 1900 Series: #16)

What with the string of events that had just transpired, the Democratic Convention had become the finish line for Kansas City. Keeping focus on the do-or-die task at hand made the successful completion of the 1900 Democratic Convention the big “ta-da” moment the city needed to pinch themselves into recognizing that they’d made it. They’d built a hall a second time, at an impressive pace, and they’d played host to some of the country’s most influential men of politics and the press.

The story of the Kansas City’s first convention hall, what it took to get it, and do it all over again, and the triumph of the Democratic convention was over. But of course, the life of the hall was just beginning, and beginning right in time for a most auspicious occasion.

In the ninety days available to rebuild the Convention Hall before the Democratic Party descended on Kansas City, it quickly became apparent that the hall might be serviceable for the convention by July 4, but it would be far from complete. That probably suited Kansas Citians just fine. When the first building had been completed, the opening day celebrations were left wanting. The general public was awed by this impressive building in which Kansas Citians felt invested. But with three frantic months of rebuilding the hall and preparing for the convention, there had been no time for Kansas City to congratulate itself on its monumental achievement. But now the convention was over, and an opportunity was on the near horizon which brought a reason to celebrate anew the Convention Hall, literally a once in a century opportunity.

As those of us who experienced the beginning of the 21^st century learned or were reminded, a decade, any decade, begins with the year ending in one, not zero. While the zero seems to make some sense aesthetically, since there is no year 0 the first year is always 1. So it was that the night 1999 ended and 2000 began, we were actually celebrating the beginning of the last year of the 20^th century. But folks in the century before us must have been smarter than folks from 2000. They understood that the really important date of celebration for the shift from the 19^th to the 20^th century would be December 31, 1900, and that January 1, 1901 was the first year of the 20^th century. And so to welcome in the century and to finally and properly welcome their new Convention Hall into the life of Kansas City, the Century Ball was planned for New Year’s Eve, 1900, to be held in the Convention Hall, of course.

The idea for the ball was presented and approved by the board on October 11, a mere eighty days before the event. Admittedly, for a town that had just built an entire building and planned a convention in 90 days, 80 days should be more than sufficient to plan a big party. The proceeds of the ball would go into the hall’s operating fund, although the Committee thought it best to focus the reason for the celebration on the important moment in history and that a specific – yet to be determined – ceremony would provide a nice theatrical touch to the celebration.

But first, there were some items on the to-do list. At the top, by the calendar at least, was the matter of post-fire subscriptions that had been pledged but never paid. The organizational structure of the convention hall was expanding – it now had its own Finance Committee, but still within the purview of the Commercial Club. The finance committee met the week after the Democratic Convention, on July 11, to discuss ways to collect those subscriptions. The pledges, particularly the larger ones, were needed immediately as the Convention Hall had only about $1,000 in its coffers, and needed to add $10,000 to the pot to finish off the work that couldn’t be completed in time for the Convention. That $10,000 was over and above the amount of past due subscriptions, about $14,500.

The July 11th minutes recount that the Secretary E.M. Clendening submitted a list of unpaid subscriptions, and that a special committee of four members of that committee were selected to meet personally with one of the slackers, none other than W.R. Nelson himself, who had made a showing of his largesse by committing to that pledge publicly in his newspaper the day of the fire. His pledge was for $5,000, almost one third of the total unpaid subscriptions. In a meeting of the committee a week later, a motion was approved to provide a list of the outstanding debts to the newspaper for publication, to be accompanied by a short description of why the money was so urgently needed.

For reasons not detailed in the record of the Convention Hall directors the following week, this resolution was proposed and adopted:

WHEREAS; woman, in all crises affecting the home, the community and the nation, can always be relied on for material assistance and moral inspiration, and

WHEREAS, in the great task of rebuilding Convention Hall the Directory has been sustained and encouraged by the loyal support substantial, financial assistance and patriotic endeavor of the women of Kansas City,

THEREFORE: be it resolved by the Board of Directors of Convention Hall, that we extend to the Megaphone Belles, the Women’s Auxiliary, the Harmony Musical Club, and all the noble women who have assisted in forwarding the great enterprise of rebuilding Convention Hall, our sincere and grateful thanks for the magnificent services they have rendered in this crisis in the history of our City.

********************

Based on the minutes and other corporate documents, the planning for the ball took up much of October, November and December, and the man hours of a remarkable number of committee members. So many, in fact, that the minutes reported that the committee would be wise to contact the newspapers to request that the names of committee members not be listed. This many people out in the community asking for advice, sometimes for favors, negotiating terms with vendors, could not help but spread the word about the Century Ball quickly, which would naturally result in requests for tickets in exchange for goods or services, or special requests for this accommodation or that many tickets, and so on. It was probably too late to stop the side deals, but keeping the wraps on the committee members’ names might stop the spread.

Ultimately, the committee took a similar approach to the arena floor tickets. The arena floor was the premium spot for the occasion, where everyone would be in their finest ballroom attire, where the band would play for the dancers, and where the finest of everything would be on offer to those who could afford the high price of that admission. The committee chose to extend invitations for the arena floor, presumably based on lists of names of the city’s wealthiest, most influential, and most generous citizens. When requests for those tickets came in, the policy was to inform interested parties that those tickets were by invitation only, and that the invitations were in the process of going out. Beyond that, there was nothing to be done. No amount of pleading, no side deal offers could materialize an invitation.

As the committee agreed, the ceremonial focus around the evening was this important date on the calendar, when not just a year or decade but an entire century was closing, and the promise of a new century lay just ahead. Arbitrary, it’s true, but the human instinct to mark the passage of time in significant increments makes it feel like the work is making itself anew. The impulse to bridge past, present and future is undeniable, and calls for ceremony. It’s recorded that the Decorations Committee for the Century Ball had been tasked with orchestrating the moment on stage that celebrates the moment in history, but no committee minutes or similar documents appeared to detail the discussion. Their choice was a fine one – tried and true and still in use today. The time capsule.

The time capsule was officially known as “the Century Box.” The box was built of heavy copper plates joined at the edges by ornamental brass trim, and measured 19 inches long,  15 inches wide, and a foot deep, sufficient to hold artifacts and messages. Another metal plate was affixed to the top, inscribed, “To the Mayor of Kansas City, Kindly Open the Enclosed” along with the date.   

Based on lists provided from various sources both at the time and later, the following pieces were part of the collection ceremonially placed in the Century Box in front of the crowd gathered at the Convention Hall the night of December 31, 1900:

• Photographs of the forty-three men who were officers and directors of the Commercial Club during 1897 and 1898
• A list of all the Century Ball committees and their members
• Century Ball ephemera – badges, programs, tickets, menus and the like
• Messages to future Kansas Citians, written out on small cards provided to the Century Ball attendees who had paid for the premium seating on the floor and in the boxes
• A letter from Judge Charles E. Moss who proposed the Century Box as the ceremonial piece of the celebration. Judge Moss’ letter was purely tongue-in-cheek – it was addressed to the future President of the United States under the fanciful presumption that in 100 years, Kansas City would surely be the nation’s capital.
• Letters from James A. Reed, the mayor of Kansas City, Missouri, and Robert L. Marshman, the mayor of Kansas City, Kansas, both letters addressed to their future counterparts.
• Similarly, letters from Fire Department Chief George Hale, Police Department Chief John Hayes, and other city officials, each letter addressed to their future counterparts as well.
• City information, including the annual Fire Department report, the Police Blue Book (a sort of department directory) along with the department’s rules, the City’s Blue book, a State of Missouri handbook, and the annual Police Department reports.
• The current city directory, assuring a great number of Kansas Citians that their names were included in the box.
• The society blue book, featuring all the names, club affiliations, business affiliations and events of interest to those who followed Kansas City high society.
• Various Kansas City newspapers
• A poster from the 1899 American Royal. Note: The American Royal’s own history dates their origins to 1899, but at that time it was still known as the National Hereford Show.
• Materials related to the Livestock Exchange
• A program from the sausage makers’ ball
• Examples of lacework and embroidery
• Samples of local businesses’ advertising materials
• The Masonic by-laws
• An 1898 issue of Century magazine with a Maxfield Parrish cover illustration, as well as other magazines including Harper’s
• A John Deere equipment catalog

The box was enclosed in the western most of the pillars that marked the main entrance at the south. It was covered by a plate, not be opened until the dawn of the 21^st century. In the accounts of the fire and the second rebuilding, however, I found no mention of the Century Box. Some thirty years later, when the Municipal Auditorium was built adjacent to the Convention Hall site, the box was moved there, waiting patiently for the midnight toast to the new 21^st Century. It would have to wait almost seventy years.

(KC 1900 Series: # 15)

And so the story finally reaches the day on which Kansas Citians had for so long pinned their hopes and dreams. Many had been convinced of its importance because they were assured that word would be sent far and wide about their wonderful city, how miraculous its resurrection had been, and how Kansas City was on the brink of a bright and unparalleled future.

Kansas City had already received a great deal of positive press and a genuine outpouring of support and sympathy across the nation for its recuperation from disaster. As to the other imaginings – how wonderful the city was, and the brightness of the city’s future, the wire stories that came out of the convention give a peak at the impression Kansas City was making on those in attendance – or at least the press in attendance.

On July 4, 1900, Kansas City played host to the Democratic National Convention. The city had long struggled to shake off a rough and tumble reputation glommed together from images of wagon trains, outlaw gangs and border wars. Indeed, even as it grew, connecting to rail lines, building the stockyards and linking the most disparate and distant places in the country, it remained a place on the way to somewhere, but with seemingly nothing to offer the country’s more sophisticated citizens.

Of course, that wasn’t true. By 1900, Kansas City was on its second generation of Eastern investors who had sent their sons and sons-in-law, their seconds-in-command and their hired advisors to come to Kansas City and figure out how best to invest in, and profit from, the growing markets Kansas City provided. And when these relative newcomers established themselves as community leaders side-by-side with those who had been here since “pioneer” days, the whines and moans of a collective inferiority complex were transformed into a community-wide determination for changing that image.

Securing the bid for the Democratic convention was the cherry on top of the sundae that was the city’s new Convention Hall. Originally, the hall had been planned for more commonplace – though important – conventions of trade and professional groups. But the City’s links with the eastern establishment gave it an opportunity to claim the Democrat’s big event with relative ease. They were officially notified only about a year prior to the convention, so the city went into overdrive to make the convention happen, at the same time remembering that this was their chance to emerge from the shadows and walk into the spotlight.

So how did Kansas City fare? It almost didn’t matter what Kansas City did or didn’t do to fashion the particular image of the city they wanted the world to see. As it has ever been and will be, it was the press that fashioned the image. And in the process, they give us a glimpse into what Kansas City was like that wouldn’t necessarily have been mentioned in the local press. What follows are some selected passages from field reports by correspondents from three major New York papers of the day – the New York Times, the New York Tribune, and the New York Sun that follow several themes. The newspaper accounts below have been condensed and conflated around these themes, and are taken from editions of each paper during the first week of July, 1900.

“Wide Open Town”

Kansas City is a wide open town, whatever else you can say about it. Conventions don’t interfere a little bit with the regular order of things on Sunday out here. {If} there is any stranger within Kansas City’s gates tonight who doesn’t have a good time it is because he doesn’t want it. 

Kansas City seems to be the paradise of the nickel-in-the-slot machines and similar automatic gambling devices. Besides the cigar stores and saloons, the drug stores, newsstands, restaurants, theatres and every other place where the public may be expected to gather is fully equipped with machines of one kind or another. In the barrooms there are machines for winning drinks and cigars on either end of the bars and away from the bars there are other machines where you can gamble for the nickel that your less fortunate brothers have dropped in and failed to get back. These machines would not be tolerated a minute in New York. No one wins by playing them.

How is it that we have not heard of this before? New York has a reputation for extreme wickedness, and we are painfully aware that we are none too good. But New York does refrain, nominally, and, to some extent, really, from many forms of Sunday amusement that Kansas City permits, and yet Kansas City does not get its name into the magazines. In some respects it is a great advantage to be little, unimportant, and inconspicuous.

The City Beautiful

The bar room fad of Kansas City just at present is cut glass displays. In many of the most popular and prosperous of these places there is a most elaborate selection of beautiful cut glass, consisting of punch bowls, vases, flower dishes, etc., piled up in the middle of the shelf behind the bar, in one of the places where an exhibit of cut glass is made it is placed upon a revolving shelf and is a very attractive sight, as it shines and sparkles in the rays of the electric light and is duplicated in the many mirrors of all sides of the room. In the smaller places the glass exhibit is stationary and not so expensive, but the general idea seems to prevail all over the town.

Kansas City is not all made up of hotels, theatres, barrooms and places of that kind. It has some beautiful spots where quiet, modest people live who know nothing of politics and care as little. These pleasant breathing spots are scattered here and there, mostly on the bluffs that line all sides of the city, and there is one place that is unique. There is the Grand Boulevard that is ten squares long and contains green grass and fountains and attractive walks and drives all around and about it. There are pillars and arcades, too, of Grecian architecture, and during this hot Sunday the benches that line the walks were filled with men, women and children in their best clothes, looking as if they were all having a good time in spite of the trouble down at the political centres.

A perpetual source of delight to convention visitors is the attention which is paid by the average Kansas City householder of modest means to the cultivation of flowers. They are seen in window boxes in little area plots abutting on the pavement, in more ample beds on the lawns and along the walls and fences, on hundreds of trellises may be seen the beautiful purpose clematis, which is now in season, while the crimson rambler, with its clusters of diminutive roses, is just closing a brilliant and successful engagement. The hollyhocks are in bloom and are seen in pleasant profusion and in great variety of colors.

How Kansas City Runs Her Railroads

There are a lot of mighty sore people in town today who don’t like the way Kansas City runs her railroads. It is the custom in this town to start the last car from each terminus at 12 o’clock midnight. That this was the custom was not generally known, and when, at half past 11 o’clock last night, when it was still hotter than mustard, and growing hotter, the people who did not have anything else to do but search for ways to keep cool, took to the street cars. They intended that they should go to the end of the line and come back. They went to the end of the lines all right and those who are kicking today discovered when they go there that the last car had gone. The ends of the Kansas City street car lines are most of them miles away from the city itself and these unfortunates were held up with no means of getting to town but to walk. The Hon. C.A. Walsh, secretary of the Democratic National Committee, was one of the victims. Mr. Walsh got out on the end of one line that ends somewhere near Independence, Mo. The conductors said when he got there, “We turn in here.”

“Thunder,” said Mr. Walsh. “How am I going to get back to town?”

“Don’t know, and care less,” said the conductor, cheerfully.

Walsh got off and snapped back at the conductor, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t know where you wanted to go,” said the conductor, and Mr. Walsh started trundling the miles back to the city. He was in luck, for he had not gone far when he found a telephone and he got a hack to come out for him. It was 2 o’clock before he got to his hotel. In many cases people were not able to find telephones and they had to walk it clear in.

A portly office holder from Greater New York, after enjoying a two hours’ session in a cool lager beer resort, started for his hotel about midnight. When about to cross the street an open car bowled along, and the New Yorker soliloquized: “Guess I’ll take a ride.” He did. The car took him to the Kansas line, and alighting, he waited expectantly for another to convey him back to the Midland (Hotel). After waiting fifteen minutes he made inquiry of a policeman and learned that no cars would go out until morning. Then he trudged along and heartily cussed the railroad company.

“Kansas City is All Right.”

This spirit of hospitality exists everywhere in this town, and the verdict on all sides is “Kansas City is all right.” The men are just as kindly as the women. Here if a stranger’s face wears an inquiring look…the citizen will ask him if there is anything that he can do. If the stranger wants to go anywhere, the man tells him how many hills away it is, or very likely he will accompany him there and that, too.

They are very swift people out here in Kansas City. You can get almost anything while you wait. Right opposite [from] the Baltimore Hotel, there is a tailor shop where you go in and get measured for a suit of clothes and get it before dark the same day. At the hotel if you want to get your clothes cleaned and pressed, they will do it for you in fifteen minutes. Of course, every Eastern man who comes here has had to have his clothes cleaned and pressed. The tailor shops in the hotels have this sign: “We fix you up while you eat or sleep.” The laundries in the hotel get clothes in the morning and return them before noon. On Walnut Street there is a sign in front of a doctor’s office: “We diagnose your case without asking questions.”

Kansas City expects a lot of women at this convention. Many delegates and leaders have sent word that they intend to bring their wives and the Kansas City women have made up their minds to give them a good time. The Athenaeum of Kansas City will throw open its house at Ninth and Locust streets, and it has invited all the women’s clubs of the city to help entertain the ladies who come here to attend the convention. All the women are going to wear lavender badges with a ribbon of red, white and blue. Like the badges the Kansas City men wear here, the badges of the Athenaeum women will contain the words: “Ask me anything you would like to know.”

The hospitality is genuine. It is kindly and not obtrusive. And visitors will go away from Kansas City with a warm spot in their hearts for the people here.

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As to the politics involved at the 1900 Convention, I leave to others to dissect, to the real historians who have devoted their time and talents to the stories of William McKinley, William Jennings Bryan, “the Cross of Gold,” the McKinley/Bryan rivalry and the short-lived Roosevelt/Bryan rivalry following President McKinley’s assassination shortly after his second term inauguration in 1901, and Vice President Theodore Roosevelt’s sudden start on what would become one of the most interesting and influential presidencies in American history. See what I mean? A lot of history there, and Kansas City was just a small early part of that.

Also, none of that has anything has anything to do with Kansas City’s history.

But another story does, if it is in fact true. The local democrats were not only contractually saddled with underwriting much of the hospitality costs involved, they were challenged to provide the convention with a large number of volunteers for various roles. The best assignments of course went to the party’s most faithful and most generous supporters. Something as small as serving as a page on the convention floor, a grunt assigned to be available to help delegates with anything they needed whenever they needed it?

Well, that was an assignment for a youngster, maybe one whose interest in politics was just beginning, and would relish this chance to play a small part in history in the making. Perhaps even one without ambition, one who’d never imagined himself as playing a large part in history. Certainly not as President of the United States.

Such, as the story goes, was President Harry S Truman’s first entry into the world of politics. But note that even though this story is (or has been) made available through the Truman Library’s website, a conversation with staff there revealed that they themselves could not identify the source of that information. If that story isn’t true, it should be.

(KC 1900 Series: #14)

(photo above: In the background, the gutted remains of the fire’s victims. From Left to right, Second Presbyterian Church (steeple & attached), unidentified residential or commercial building on Broadway, Lathrop School, Convention Hall (long row of arches), partial view of the Williamson block flats directly north of the hall. In the center a small crowd next to some of the few salvageable materials, and foreground and right, small lots with stables, worksheds, small houses, etc., and larger tenement housing)

In this dual-topic post, it’s time to consider causes and effects of the Convention Hall Fire. The Causes segment refers to the single, technical causes of the fire, plain and simple. On the other hand, the fire’s Effects are varied and nuanced. How does a major disaster affect the morale, the economy, the priorities of a city? Whose reputations would rise or sink as a result of the calamity? And the city’s reputation, how was that effected, and would it also effect the city’s ability to keep the all-important Democratic Convention, scheduled to open exactly 3 months to the date after the fire?

Let me be clear right up here. There were no conspiracies or heinous crimes behind the fire. And there are no singular heroic deeds of sacrifice and bold action in resurrecting the hall. But there are some fascinating backstories that I’ve never seen in any of the modern accounts of the event. It’s possible I’ve missed them, but not for lack of searching.

Causes

The Convention Hall fire consumed virtually any possible evidence of the cause of the fire. Even if there had been evidence, forensic investigation in this era was limited Inevitably then, the exact cause of the fire was never determined, but it was officially declared accidental.

The most likely cause was electrical, based on the most informed comments quoted in the paper in the days following the fire. It was disclosed in the editions of the Star on the evening of the fire and the next evening that well before the fire, back when the building was nearing completion, the wiring was deemed to be inadequate by industry standards, even though the city inspectors had approved it. They approved it because the city’s building codes process had been followed, even though it was out of date. The wiring contractors, the H.R. Electric Company and the electrical engineering firm, Hodge, Walsh & Loring, had installed the wiring as directed by the plans. Before they could be paid, the city’s electrician and the insurance underwriters had to approve the work. Insurance for the hall had been underwritten by many companies so as to minimize the risk to any one company. The underwriters and the city inspectors all approved the work, and the contractors were paid.

Subsequently, Frank Fetter step forward to dispute those approvals. Fetter was the manager of a bureau that was not named but according to the Star, was where “all the insurance companies get their information about building.” Fetter pronounced the wiring as inadequate.

“It was done after a fashion that is prohibited by the national underwriters,” Fetter said. “The rules do not permit running as many lights from one wire as they insisted upon running. I don’t know that the electric wires caused the fire, but where so many lights run from one wire the current runs to 300 or 400 ampheres, and that produces heat.”

The wires to which Fetter objected serviced 3,200 arc lights. Arc lights were used then for lighting large spaces, like factory floors or arenas. They were also used to bring intense light to small areas, like the stage in the Convention Hall. All it would take is for just one lamp in the string to malfunction and overheat, conducting that heat through the length of the wire and igniting fire along any combustible surface it encountered, which was most of the interior of the hall. The arc light wiring connected at the main junction on the building’s northwest corner, creating a probable place for ignition and for spreading throughout the building quickly..

An electrical fire would explain the fire’s ability to move as it did throughout the building without creating the kind of billowing smoke that a rubbish fire usually makes. The fire had to have been burning for a long time to create enough heat to cause the front of Lathrop School to be hot to the touch even before the fire broke through the roof of the Convention Hall.

Eye witness accounts corroborated Fetter’s theories. There were witnesses inside the hall at the time, who saw the blaze’s beginnings. The men were C.B. Norton, a local wholesale jeweler, and his two out-of-town customers, E.V. Moorsel and R.J. Maulsby. When the visitors expressed an interest in the new hall, Norton offered to take them to see it over the lunch hour. In a newspaper account shortly after the fire, Norton recalls they entered the building just before 1:00 pm. They walked right in, entering the building from the southeast corner, passing only a few other people. Everything seemed normal until they reached the center of the large arena floor and, looking around, saw the flames at the northwest corner near the stage. Even after they could hear shouting in the street and a voice that said the fire had been called in, they remained a few minutes more to watch the fire progress. “The tongues of flame that were just starting their work when we first saw them rapidly grew into blazing sheets that climbed up the sounding board and ate their way to the roof,” Norton told the Star reporter. “The area of the blaze broadened on all sides and the entire north end of the hall became a mass of flaming red as we watched. The blaze reached the ropes that supported the curtain and ate them away. The big roll of canvas fell with a crash that shook the building and as the sparks became too numerous we hasted from the building and took a stand at the church corner. We were driven from there a few moments later by the sparks and heat together.”

Effects

Without its first-class venue, there was great doubt, locally and across the country, whether Kansas City could find the capacity to hold the convention, particularly given it was scheduled to open in just three months. There were three major threats to Kansas City’s goal of holding the Democratic Convention on schedule:

• The efforts of other cities to convince the national party they would be better off changing plans now and selecting another site for the convention.
• The financing of the new building, which had to be in place soon so work could get started and keep moving.
• Revisions to the design to improve fire protection, and the actual rebuild, which had the usual odds of facing problems with labor, materials, scheduling, and weather, just to name a few.

Democratic Convention:

If the Democratic Party backed out, local enthusiasm for the rebuild project almost certainly would wane. The purses of the corporate financiers and the common citizens would snap shut. It might never again be possible to regain the civic commitment to a Convention Hall, and if that weren’t bad enough, a large empty chunk of downtown Kansas City would remain a sad reminder of failure.

Almost immediately, it became clear that some elements of the building would have to be temporary, only serviceable for the term of the convention, and subsequently made permanent after the convention was over. As part of considering the possibility of a temporary facility, immediately upon hearing about the fire representatives came from St. Louis came to Kansas City, ostensibly to give advice on the quick construction of a hall, having recently completed a similar but much smaller venue in seventy days. St. Louis assured Kansas City that it came only to help its Missouri sister city. Should Kansas City decide to build a temporary structure, they were welcome to use St. Louis’ plans. Said a member of the St. Louis advisory delegation, “I don’t believe there is a business man in St. Louis who did not feel a genuine sorrow when he heard of Kansas City’s loss yesterday. We here want to do everything we can and offer every encouragement to her at this time. St. Louis doesn’t want to be put down in the vulture class, like Cincinnati and Milwaukee, who were hovering over your town, asking for the convention before your building had ceased to burn, but if it is found that Kansas City cannot handle it we will make an attempt to keep it in Missouri. We have a hall not quite as large as your Convention Hall, but it is big enough.”

Even as firefighters and laborers worked to clean up the disaster site, the city of Cincinnati was letting it be known through the Associated Press that it was interested, as was Kansas City’s rival in the final round, Milwaukee. But the same day as the fire, the Star ran a small piece, “Will Meet Here Anyway.” The article was filled with mostly reservedly hopeful statements of various members of the Democratic Party higher-ups, from Missouri’s former Governor Stone to the Secretary of the Democratic Executive Committee. But the most affirming statement came from the secretary of the Democratic Executive Committee, who offered, “Any person who has come in contact with the business men of Kansas City must have been impressed with the fact that the town contains a higher degree of public spirit than any other city in the United States, and I believe the people there will provide suitable accommodations for the national Democratic convention. It seems to me that the national committee will certainly aid them in every way in its power.”

And while the Democratic Party did not have to step in to play a direct role in getting Kansas City ready for the convention, the Party’s reiteration of its plan was enough to quash any serious discussion of moving the convention, which immediately helped solidify Kansas City’s attempts to start rebuilding the hall right away.

Finance:

It may sound like local myth or great press, but it is absolutely true that as soon as the Commercial Club crowd heard the Convention Hall was on fire, they set about raising money all over again. While reports differ slightly, the figure that came up most frequently was that they were able to raise (not hard cash, but firm commitments) about $35,000 before the fire was extinguished. The Commercial Club was not alone in this spontaneous fundraising, but having been the flag bearer for the first Convention Hall, it was natural and inevitable that the lead of the rebuilding movement would position the Commercial Club members and staff as the public faces of the effort.

There was a critical need for financing as soon as possible because there was an even greater need to demonstrate to the city, the nation and most of all, the Democratic Party that Kansas City could rebuild. The rebuild would turn out to be considerably cheaper than the original, because big ticket items among the original expenses like the property acquisition, the predevelopment steps, and the design wouldn’t be repeated. But the speed required to do the work would add back costs when it came to expediting materials. The construction estimate was already about $180,000, with no contingency attached. The insurance on the building amounted to $150,050. The coverage was spread among 92 different companies, many responsible for only $500 each, and eleven responsible for between $4,000 and $5,000 apiece. The Building Committee had another $10,000 in the bank. And though there had originally been some hope of salvaging some of the trusses, they were declared unusable, but would be scrapped for another $8,000. The $35,000 in subscriptions that was collected from the public in those first days after the fire took the total available funds to about $203,000.

The Commercial Club probably would have been able to cover the costs based on the money from all sources they had in hand in the first week. But, since no one yet knew what the final cost would be, because any remaining money could be used for additional investment in the building now or in the future, and because the public subscription drive was, as it had originally been, the best way of making sure the citizens of Kansas City felt truly invested in the success of the “people’s building,” the decision was made to continue the subscription drive.

Design/Build:

One of the overarching effects of the fire on the city was the doubt cast by many that it wouldn’t be possible to rebuild the hall in three months. Some of the most persuasive voices were noted architects and builders in the city, who seemed to be in agreement that it would be an “absolutely impossibility,” according to the newspaper. Their reason was the steel, which everyone believed could not be fabricated to specifications and shipped to Kansas City in time..

The architectural plans would need some revision, but not before the basic construction could begin. So it was decided that Frederick Hill, the architect who had designed and built the original hall, would be retained for the rebuild. Commercial Club Secretary Clendening took the lead on contacting the metal manufacturing companies, to determine the earliest possible date for duplicating the ironwork and steel trusses. He contacted one company in Minneapolis about the ironwork, but the steel trusses were more imperative, and more difficult to have produced quickly. Several other members of the Commercial Club, with one connection or another to a short list of three national steel producers, reached out to them about their ability to meet Kansas City’s needs. While the others were still contemplating and calculating what it would take to produce the trusses, the Carnegie works in Pittsburg responded, pledging to produce three trusses deliverable in six weeks, and three more every week until the work was completed. The directors wasted no time, and voted to accept the Carnegie proposal.

The one and a half million board feet for the original building had been furnished by the Kansas City Lumber Company. When contacted by Chairman Campbell of the original Building Committee, company Secretary and Commercial Club member George Gray not only pledged that the lumber would be provided on schedule, but that the cost would be the same as it had been when construction on the original hall in 1897. In the four years that had since passed, the price of lumber had risen nearly forty percent.

The Building Committee and the Hall’s Board of Directors may have seen these early offers as signs of victory over the greatest challenges they faced in meeting their July 4 deadline. But in the way of almost every construction project completed since perhaps the Pyramids, the usual snags and delays kept the board and committee members individually involved in making the project work. Carnegie’s pledge for the trusses fell apart when they failed to meet the schedule they proposed. The job scheme had been designed for an efficiency that presumed each trade would follow the other in proper sequence, working in sequence from the south end of the hallto the north. When installation of the trusses, one of the most basic building elements, was delayed, it stalled every trade in the queue behind it. And beyond their delay, even when the trusses arrived, the crew that had been hired to salvage the burned trusses that littered the worksite was barely making any progress.

Finally there were problems with the laborers. Because of Carnegie’s failure to produce, the contract was given to Gillette-Herzog from Minneapolis, who brought their own non-union workers to install the trusses. The work, they explained, was better done by those with the specialized training, which, given the company’s area of expertise, the workers definitely had. They added they also had hired a few of the top men from the local unions. Labor disputes of all types continued through the rebuilding of the Hall. It’s a complicated story involving all the trades, with continuous lockouts creating a herky-jerky feel to the pace of progress. The Commercial Club and their supporters simply wanted to have the hall ready by July 4. The various labor unions and industrial councils wanted to remind the community of promises made and speeches given underscoring the project as the “people’s building,” in every sense of the word, including its provision of a working wage for all the laborers on the site – union and non-union. And contractors were anxious about meeting their individual deadlines, and thereby avoiding any financial penalties.

In the end, Gillette-Herzog finished installing the steel trusses three weeks ahead of their promised deadline of June 21, and the work now progressed smoothly from the south end to the north. The labor disputes were resolved in time to get to the hall completed sufficiently for the Democratic Convention. And though victory was declared, and no real mention of the matter was made during the convention, the hall was, in fact, incomplete, and many of the interior spaces and fixtures were barely finished enough to be serviceable.

The hall would not be complete until the end of the year, just in time for the city’s end-of-the century New Year’s Eve celebration. They would call it the Century Ball.

(KC 1900 Series: # 13)

The Great Kansas City Convention Hall Fire is about to start. And those who were there will tell the fire’s story. The accidental witnesses, the denizens of the boarding houses and shops in the vicinity, the newspaper reporters, the civic leaders all have a view to share. There were so many, in fact, that their pieced together stories provide a continuous story of the day, raising this event from a common conflagration to an influential milestone in the city’s history, and deservedly so.

Thanks to the exhaustive reporting of the Kansas City Star and other local papers, as well as an excellent retrospective that appeared in the Star fifty seven years after the event and a few other miscellaneous sources, it is possible to capture the big and small moments over the course of the day from multiple points of view. The March 31, 1957 Star retrospective, “The Fire that Gave Birth to The Kansas City Spirit 57 Years Ago,” was written by Henry Van Brunt. Van Brunt was a well-known architect who had submitted a design proposal for the hall in 1898 at the start of what became a long, distinguished career.

Monday, April 2, 1900: Two days before the fire

That evening, the Chief of the Fire Department, George Hale, came to the Convention Hall to meet with some of his men, in anticipation of the National Democratic Convention, still three months away. That same night, the local Democratic Party was meeting at the hall, to plan the individual events of the convention in the spaces where they were to occur.

Hale walked with his men around the arena, assessing the hall for fire hazard concerns related to the convention. As the firefighters toured the building, Hale noticed piles of old straw under the arena balcony, some empty paper boxes and other debris in a corner, left behind after a recent event, and the number of people inside – workers and visitors both – freely smoking. Smoking was prohibited inside the building but the rule was rarely observed. Hale immediately called the hall’s manager, J.P. Loomas, to the site and ordered the mess cleaned up as soon as possible. Loomas promised to attend to it first thing in the morning, so Hale kept watch by the piles for the remainder of the evening.

Tuesday, April 3: One day before the fire

As directed by Chief Hale the prior evening, J.P. Loomas put a crew on clearing the debris under the balcony. He later told the Star, “I had the old paper and rubbish carried away so that the place had been cleaned thoroughly the day before the fire. Except that there was tobacco on some of the floors that had not been cleaned since the Democrats had their big meeting Monday night, the building was cleaner than it had been, I might say, since it was built.”

Also that day, the city had elected its 32^nd mayor. Democrat James A. Reed succeeded Republican James M. Jones, and would be sworn in two weeks later.

Wednesday, April 4: Morning of the fire

Four carpenters and a plumber were working on the flooring in the building’s interior roof garden. A group of boys who had been hired as part of the janitorial crew were working on small jobs about the building. When interviewed later by Fire Chief Hale, the boys said they had seen two men walking around inside the building smoking cigars in the late morning. The boys ordered them to leave, but the men ignored them. It is worth noting that the story the boys told was later corroborated by Chief Hale, and so was deemed credible. It is also worth noting that the boys were identified in the newspaper account as “negroes.” That, and the fact they were young boys likely accounts for why their order to leave the building was ignored, and the fact that they did not press the point further.

12:00 pm: An hour before the fire

Noon brought the lunch hour. Three janitors were inside the building, taking a break. The building manager, Loomas, went home for his meal. Despite the blustery southwest wind and the mid-day chill of early spring, the sun was shining and the downtown sidewalks were filled with people going about their lives.

12: 45 pm: The fire starts

Based on the investigation that followed the event, the actual fire likely started somewhere around 12:45. It must have traveled quickly through the building. The first sightings all focused on the northwest corner. There were two potential sources of heat or combustion housed in adjacent rooms in that northwest corner – the circuit room and the boiler room. Whatever the source, the fire likely used the wiring to start spreading out, slowly igniting the wooden elements as it went, until there was sufficient fire to break through the roof, where the flames were fanned by the strong southeast wind.

1:00 pm: Flames sighted

At 12^th and Broadway, just a block north of the hall, someone outside the Eyssell Drug Store spotted smoke coming from the northwest corner of the hall. At 1:00 pm, the store clerk made the first call to the fire department. At the same time, or shortly thereafter, the janitors inside the hall discovered the fire, and made another call to the fire department.

At the Lathrop School, just across from the hall on the west side of Central, lunch period was over and the study bell at the school had just rung. About 200 students were at school that day. Principal J.A.Barnard looked out his window and saw flames and smoke right across the street, coming from the Convention Hall. Walking toward the school from the schoolyard where students had gathered before the bell, the teachers and students saw fire too. Barnard ran to the front entrance only to discover the front façade of the school was already hot. Embers at first, then pieces of wood on fire floated with the wind and settled around the school.  As teachers and students came down the stairs toward the front entrance, Barnard directed them to the back door, away from the fire. Some of the teachers and children who were still outside first headed for the front door, but by then the school had caught fire, so they ran north on Central. No serious injuries were reported, but the newspaper noted that “the pupils nearly all lost their schoolbooks.”

Sitting just south of the Lathrop School and across Central from the south entrance to the hall was the sanctuary and the parsonage of Second Presbyterian Church. The school and the church buildings were most likely ignited by the flames from the south end of the hall, so the church likely caught fire shortly after the school.

1:05 pm: Fire engines head to the fire

Fire Chief Hale was enjoying his luncheon in a downtown eatery, having left Assistant Chief Alexander Henderson in charge at the department’s headquarters at 8^th and Walnut. Henderson led the first crew to respond to the call. The minute the team left the firehouse, Henderson could see the smoke billowing above the buildings in the direction of the convention hall eight blocks away to the southwest, and he called back to the men on watch in the firehouse to give the second alarm.

More calls started flooding in, including one from Edward H. Murray, a sign painter, who saw the smoke from the back door of his shop at 13^th and Main, about two blocks east of the hall. According to Murray the first fire engines arrived on the scene nine minutes after he called in the alarm.

1:10 pm: Reporters on the scene

On the fifth floor offices of Peck Dry Goods Store at 11^th and Baltimore, Charles Blood, editor of the Star’s regular feature, “Forty Years Ago,” was waiting for Mr. Peck. Peck’s had provided one of the prizes for the Convention Hall’s subscription drive – a pedigree English bulldog named Buckskin Pritscher, and Mr. Blood, the winner, was there to pick up the dog’s certification. Mr. Blood was waiting by the window when he noticed a plume of smoke in the general direction of the Convention Hall, quickly followed by the clang of the fire wagon bells and the sound of galloping hooves on the cobblestone streets below. Fires being fairly common , Blood paid no particular heed until he left the Peck building and came out on Main Street, just as another fire engine raced past him. He watched the horses as they turned to climb the 11^th Street hill, and then noticed the growing mob following in the fire engine’s wake. Blood followed the crowd until he reached the Kansas City Club at 12^th and Wyandotte, only a half block from the hall.

Another reporter, Louis Shouse with the Kansas City Times, was walking down Baltimore when one of the first fire engines came by, led by Dan and Joe, the horse team that Chief Hale and his men had made famous at the international firefighter competitions in recent years. The horses headed up 10^th Street, then turned south on Central. In a 1950 edition of the Star commemorating Kansas City’s 100^th anniversary, Shouse recalled the moment.

“By the time I reached Twelfth Street, flames were bursting out of the roof of the hall…It soon became plain that there was not a chance of saving any part of the building…Exposition buildings of this type had in them enough wood to create such terrific heat that the thousands of panes of glass melted to a liquid and the steel girders twisted like strips of tin…”

1:15 pm: Word spreads far and wide

Twelfth Street was flooded with onlookers who, along with Mr. Blood of the Star, were catching their first glimpse of the fire by peering down the alley between the north end of the hall and a row of boarding houses known as the Williamson block. But by then, there was little to see of the hall but “smoke and ashes and stark, twisted girders.”  Mr. Blood looked at his watch. It was 1:15 pm, just 15 minutes after the first call, and about 30 minutes after the fire had started.

It could not have taken more than ten minutes for at least the first two fire engines to arrive on the scene. However, it is true that there were some engine teams – one from the West Bottoms was mentioned in the reports – that had trouble getting to the site of the fire quickly. Poor equipment, steep terrain and aged horses all played a part in the delays. At the fire, the water was woefully under pressured. There was also one report that one of the hoses had become disconnected and that for nearly ten minutes there was no water being sprayed on the fire. But none of this likely would have changed the outcome. When Assistant Chief Henderson and his men arrived, first on the scene, it was already too late to save the hall.  From the Star:

“When we reached the hall,” [Henderson] said, “the heat was so terrific that we never got inside the building. It was a blessing to the firemen that we did not, for if it had been possible for human beings to stand the heat I would have sent those boys into the building and they wouldn’t have hesitated to go. Every fireman who was there contributed to the building of the hall and had the interest in it that a man has in his own property. But we never got nearer than across the street. The men dragged one line of hose across 13^th Street, but the heat drove them away, and before the water could be turned on or the hose dragged back the hose was burned to pieces.” The fire was so intense that there was really no need for the rope blockades the fire department had put in front of the crowds: the heat was enough to keep everyone far back from the fire.

Fifteen minutes after the first report of the fire had come through the phone company’s Central exchange, word of the disaster had passed to towns all over the region. Between the calls from locals wanting to know what was happening, and the newspapers from all over the area trying to call in for information, the Central exchange reportedly set records for the number of calls handled within an hour. The Star reported the manager of the exchange claimed, “Our operators were so busy that several of the girls fainted from exhaustion. It was by far the busiest day in the history of the system.”

Meanwhile, Charles Blood headed back to the Kansas City Star’s offices, but first stopped to talk with some of the men he knew who had come out of the Kansas City Club to witness the fire. The men were collecting money from people in the crowd, money that was then stuffed into envelopes. When Charles Blood asked the men what they were doing, they answered they were starting a fund for donations to rebuild the hall, just as they had done for the one that now lay in ruins. The hall, they reminded Blood, had to be rebuilt in time for the Democratic Convention, just 90 days away.

1:30 pm: Breaking news

Charles Blood raced all the way to the Star’s offices, and up the inside stairs until he found William Rockhill Nelson himself in conference with city editor Ralph Stout. Blood would later claim to be the first to tell Nelson about the fire, even though it would be reported later that there were already 34 reporters on the scene by this time. Blood noted how both men were stunned to hear the awful news, and in a retrospective on the fire in 1857, the author, Henry Van Brunt’s account reported that the story Blood told brought tears to Nelson’s eyes. While that might be hyperbole, it is important to remember that this was more than a major newspaper story to Nelson. This was one of the major civic projects where he used the Star’s position and influence to promote broad community support for something he believed was absolutely necessary for Kansas City’s growth. So when Blood further told him about the fund raising efforts that were already underway, Nelson declared this would be the feature of the paper’s evening story on the fire. The evening edition did focus on the donations, and reported that already, almost before the fire was extinguished, Kansas Citians had contributed more than $30,000 for reconstruction. This time, the largest contribution that first day came from the Kansas City Star.

By 1:30 a fire engine arrived at the south end of the hall, only to spot a workman on the roof. It took four long minutes to raise the ladder to the roof, and in that four minutes the wind had shifted and was quickly spreading the fire southward. The workman (identified only as Roby in the Star, but as James Brennan in the Kansas City Gazette), and the fireman who climbed the ladder to reach him both came down unharmed.

When the roof had burned nearly all the way to the south end, Charles Blanton, a janitor at the hall and a black man, made a daring decision. His boss, J.P. Loomas, having gone to lunch, had locked the door to his office near the front (south) end of the building. Blanton knew the office held the hall’s most important records. Many were in a safe, but as to the rest, he broke into the office and took as much as he could hold in his arm, rescuing these papers from the fire. Included among the papers were correspondence, invoices, contracts, photos and other documents that told the early history of the Convention Hall, some of which served as invaluable resources for this series on the Convention Hall fire.

1:45 pm: A complete loss

The far south end of the Convention Hall, the last part of the building to catch fire, finally succumbed. It crashed onto 13^th Street, taking with it the brick Corinthian columns that had become a signature feature of the hall. And with that, at last, the remainder of the ceiling and the burned twisted trusses crashed to the floor of the burned out shell that had only moments before been the building that was the pride of Kansas City. As if choreographed, at the same moment, just across Central the tall graceful steeple of the 2^nd Presbyterian Church leaned to the west and collapsed almost silently while suddenly sending up a column of sparks and smoke.

2::00 pm: More devastation

The wind-stoked flames and the flying embers and debris caught the Williamson block on fire. The Williamson block consisted of six different boarding houses, directly north of the hall along 12^th Street. Firemen evacuated the buildings as quickly as possible, while some residents stayed behind to save belongings. Eventually, however, though the block was a total loss, the residents were all safe.

The 1200 block of Broadway, the stretch directly west of and behind the 2^nd Presbyterian Church and the Lathrop School caught fire, too. The fire eventually reached six private homes, the Arklow boarding house, Carey’s book store, A.G. Gardner’s tailor shop, Wolf’s meat market, the Hotel Cunningham, and Eysell’s Drug Store, where the original call to the fire department had been made just an hour before.

As the occupants of the Broadway buildings struggled to save whatever possible by dragging their belongings into the street, linemen were working to cut the wires along both 12^th and 13^th Streets, creating a level of chaos and a threat of electrocution that the police department struggled to control.

2:30 pm: It’s over

The fire was finally contained and with the exception of a few remaining hot spots, nearly extinguished. The crowds moved back to their position next to the ropes that kept them from harm’s way, straining to get a look at the extent of the damage. One look and they saw the awful truth – virtually nothing remained of the Convention Hall. Even the stone and concrete work that remained standing looked unstable, visibly pitted and scorched, and broken in places where the great, twisted trusses shattered it apart as they fell to the ground.

3:30 pm: Wasting no time

The Board of Directors of the Commercial Club quickly convened an emergency meeting at their offices just a few blocks north of the hall. The meeting was largely ceremonial. They entered into their minutes a statement describing how the devastation of the loss of the Convention Hall struck at the heart of the City and its residents, and that the Club was committed to the effort required to rebuild the hall or, in the event that wasn’t possible, to find a suitable place for the meeting of the Democratic Convention. They had three months. The manager was directed to begin the site clean-up. Secretary Clendening was directed to meet with the insurance companies, and to give notice of a public meeting to be held the following evening. The Kansas City Star was already tallying the fundraising efforts.

The work of rebuilding the hall had begun. And the story continues.

(All photos courtesy the State Historical Society of Missouri – Kansas City)

(KC 1900 Series # 12)

At the time of the Convention Hall Fire, Kansas City was home to two extraordinary men who were in a position to be influential in the story of the Convention Hall fire and resurrection. One was at the start of a long and brilliant political career that would put him in the circles of the most influential men in both the national political arena, and the local criminal organizations. The other was already at the height of his career as an internationally recognized leader in the innovation of his profession. Both would have been in a position to emerge as one of the heroes of the Convention Hall fire story, but it was hubris for one and unforeseen forces for the other that kept them from that opportunity. So why include them? Because these two men are among the most fascinating and influential men in Kansas City’s history, yet among the least familiar. Because their lack of influence serves as a reminder that position and expertise shine when a project is on the rise, but it’s often luck, timing and grit, the purview of the less exhalted, that seize the day when the going gets rough.

James A. Reed

The day before the Convention Hall fire, April 3, 1900, Kansas City held its biennial council and mayoral election. The mayoral race went to James A. Reed. Reed was a prominent public figure by this time, but I had yet to come across Reed’s name in any of the documented discussions, public or private, that I had unearthed concerning the Convention Hall project. Reed was, as they say, conspicuous by his absence. But whatever his role in the resurrection of the Convention Hall, Reed’s is a story worth sharing, because it captures a genuine national-level politician’s long and eventful career at the moment it begins, at the rise of the Kansas City political machine’s influence and with a national political convention waiting in the wings.

James Alexander Reed was twenty six when he came to Kansas City in 1887 having learned the law in the apprentice’s way at a firm in his hometown of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The move was precipitated by his recent marriage to a woman with whom he had had an affair, resulting in her divorce and her subsequent marriage to Reed. In Kansas City, Reed started his law practice almost simultaneously with his lifelong association with the Pendergasts.  This was Reed’s entry into the political life of Kansas City, in particular, the Democratic life. For in those days, the Pendergast machine wasn’t the only one in town, or even the only Democratic faction. Reed was welcomed by the Pendergast men, but not as much by Shannon’s. But when it came to bipartisan elections, the two groups found a way to bond behind a single candidate. So in that way, Reed was both the darling and the black sheep of Kansas City’s Democratic “family.” 1897 saw the end of Reed’s private law practice when he was appointed city councilor, and in 1898 was elected Jackson County prosecutor, both positions courtesy of Pendergast support. And thanks, too, for the support that positioned him to fulfill his political ambitions, for in 1890 there would be a mayoral race that Reed had his eye on.

While no question Jim Pendergast’s support was instrumental in giving Reed his start, Reed was by all accounts a remarkable attorney. Over his long career, he prosecuted some of the most notable or notorious cases in local history. He was a remarkable orator – erudite, but plain spoken and direct. He was not known for his public persona, which ranged from taciturn to dour, but he evoked strong reactions in everyone he met. In 1910 Reed was elected to the US Senate, and served three terms. In 1919 he was the most vocal among the senators who voted against President Wilson’s League of Nations. For that, Wilson excoriated him publicly. When Wilson retired in 1929, he was lauded by the noted journalist, H.L. Menken, who wrote in “American Mercury,” the journal he co-founded,

“To be a fraud is safer and happier in Washington today, [for James A. Reed] …has hung up his sword and gone home to Missouri…The stature of such a man as Reed is not to be counted by his successes. The important thing is that he fights.”

But that was still ahead of James Reed early in 1900, as Kansas City was anticipating the imminent opening of the new convention hall. Reed was not-so-privately discussing the pros and cons of  running for mayor with the political influentials in town. The election was little more than three months away. The Kansas City Star had written an article speculating on Reed’s candidacy, attributing his reticence to the pay disparity between the county prosecutor and the mayor – $1,600 per year.

When the Kansas City delegation made its pitch to the National Democratic Party in Chicago that February, the contest had come down to Kansas City and Milwaukee. Each city was allowed to present a case for its selection using no more than three designated speakers. Kansas City went first in the debate, and James A. Reed was its opening speaker. Kansas City won the vote, and more than a few reports indicated Reed’s powers of persuasion played no small part in the victory.

If there had been any doubt that James Reed would run for mayor, by the time the Democratic junket returned to Kansas City that doubt was erased. The pieces had all fallen in place. But even with all his talents, Reed was not a shoe-in, but what today would be cast as a “likeable candidate.” His personality deficits have already been noted. Worse, Reed was not a big promoter of the city – he had actively opposed the parks and boulevards plan and he had opposed the building of the convention hall, one of the issues that put Reed on the outs with William Rockhill Nelson and The Kansas City Star, an unfortunate dissonance for a politically ambitious lawyer like Reed.

But a convention, especially a Democratic one, was something else. The pitch session had already given Reed a chance to show the national party what he was made of. And no doubt the Pendergast imprimatur on Reed made for a fine introduction to the men to know in Chicago. Confident in his oratory and his rhetoric, Reed would likely have considered primarily one thing – a chance to be mayor in a city hosting a national convention of his own party would be the ideal setting for laying the groundwork for future political office.

In some ways, Reed won the primary, and then the general election, almost in spite of himself. Reed was the king of the county courthouse, but city hall was of only occasional interest, unless it had to do with legal work. Being, as he was, almost completely unfamiliar with the day-to-day tasks of running the city, and the issues of the day, and where the important players stood on the issues, he tended to lead with his personal opinions (not necessarily fully informed, nor aligned with his constituents) and then rely on his talent for rhetoric and oratory. Early in the race he arrived at a series of town-hall-like meetings so ill-prepared that he became the laughing stock of the week, and every one of Reed’s missteps made the pages of the Kansas City Star – Nelson made sure he had reporters at every meeting to catch Reed in a moment of embarrassment.

When Reed awoke on the morning of April 4, he was looking at Kansas City with new eyes, no doubt, seeing a world in which he had a strong professional reputation, a network of well-positioned supporters, the majority position gained from the Democrat sweep of the election night, and more or less carte blanche to set the city’s agenda. But by 1:00 that afternoon, a lot of what Reed assumed he had was, quite literally, going up in smoke. And that, as we’ll see in an upcoming piece, Reed discarded whatever chance he had to provide help to the rebuilding efforts. And eventually, prove himself no friend of the subject of the following profile.

********************

George C. Hale

Learning about George C. Hale, Kansas City’s world-famous fire chief, and writing a bit of his story for an earlier KCB post was one of the tales about the Convention Hall fire that made me interested in learning more. And I have learned more – enough, in fact, that the original piece, while largely on the mark, assumed some things that have proved to be more common belief than fact. At the same time, I came across information that wasn’t present in the original research pertaining to the Convention Hall story. So here, now, is the slightly updated story of George C. Hale.

Kansas City was lucky in so many small ways – the right people at the right time to make use of the opportunities presented. But of all the ones unearthed as a result of putting together the Convention Hall’s story, no example of providential opportunity should have been better than that of George Consider Hale, the premiere firefighter of his day, certain in this country, and quite possibly anywhere.

Locally, George Hale was praised as Chief of the city’s Fire Department, being in possession of all the most important attributes needed for the job. As proclaimed by his predecessor who endorsed him for the position of chief, Hale was “an active worker…always found in the thickest of the fight…a man without fear, always ready to command.” But George Hale’s legacy, the important attribute that kept him from being relegated to a footnote in history, had nothing to do with his talents as a leader of the city fire department. Indeed, Hale was unique among peers for this talent. He was an ingenious machinist and engineer – a sort of firefighting entrepreneur.

Not much is readily available on Hale’s personal life. He was born in 1849 or 1850, and came to Kansas City when he was about thirteen. It’s reasonable to assume he came here with family, but with or without a family, he apparently set out straight away on an apprenticeship as a mechanic. During that apprenticeship, he is credited with having built the first industrial steam engine in the city. That might seem far-fetched, but consider that just three years later, only about 20 years old, Hale was in charge of a major feature of building the first bridge to cross the Missouri River, the Hannibal Bridge (today’s Broadway Bridge). Hale was key to the bridge’s greatest innovation, the rotating bridge that turned ninety degrees to create clearance for the larger ships navigating the river. Hale worked directly under the supervision of the famous Octave Chanute, the world renowned engineer who designed the bridge and oversaw its construction.

Hale was said to have had a long-standing fascination with fire engines and the fire service. That may explain why just after the bridge was completed, when he was still only about twenty-one, he joined the fire department to work as the chief mechanic for the department’s first steam engine. A year later, the department completed the transfer from all volunteer to full-time staffing. Fire was an increasing problem in Kansas City – in every city, for that matter – where so many of the structures were wooden, yet fueled by wood burning stoves. With the full-time staff came an expansion in the number of fire houses, and the acquisition of more and better equipment. Lucky, then, was Kansas City to have George Hale in its ranks. In the years between his first hiring, through all his advancement in the department, George Hale turned his ideas into inventions, and with Hale as its leader, the Kansas City Fire Department became one of the most famous fire departments in the world.

Because Hale was a fireman, he understood at a very practical level what firefighters needed in terms of equipment. As an engineer, Hale understood the mechanical principles needed to make more modern and more specialized equipment. Over the years, he became the holder of some sixty U.S. Patents, most of which registered between 1878 and 1890.  His inventions included a specialized rotary engine, a water tower that could be transported to the site of the fire. He also paid attention to the small improvements, like specialized cutters, alarm systems, and special fittings for the horses that pulled the fire engines.

Through the popularity of these inventions, Hale and, consequently, the Kansas City Fire Department became so well regarded that twice they were selected to represent the United States at the International Fire Congress, first in 1893 in London, and then again in Paris in 1900. At both competitions, Kansas City performed heads and shoulder above its European counterparts, and Chief Hale in particular was celebrated, including an audience with Queen Victoria. Stopping over in London on the return from the Paris showing, Chief Hale was offered $3,000 a week to exhibit his crews’ talents nightly at the London Hippodrome. Even though the trip had drained most of their travel funds, Hale declined, saying they had not traveled to make money, but only to promote Kansas City, Missouri and its fire department.

Hale and his award-winning team appeared at the Paris Congress in August of 1900. By that time, all of America and most of Europe had heard about the great fire that had consumed Kansas City’s brand new convention hall, and how the city had rallied to rebuild. Hale and his crew were already celebrated in Europe, so recognition of the role that the Fire Department must have played in this great catastrophe only enhanced that reputation. As bad as the fire was, outsiders could only assume that it would have been worse if not for Kansas City’s excellent fire department: How could it be otherwise?

How indeed? In next week’s post, we will experience the fire – as close to minute by minute as possible, from the perspective of a dozen or so first-hand accounts, that will reveal the true extent of the role of the fire department on that all important day.

(Banner Photo: (left) Kansas City City Hall, and (right) Fire Department Headquarters at the time of the fire in 1900.)

(KC 1900 Series #10)

Rather than burden each post with all the terrific images I’ve found that are connected to those stories, I’m including “photo essays” of additional image material I found for the respective stories. The first essay, below, includes images related to the first nine stories that take us from the motives behind building the hall, through the fundraising, design and construction, and ending with the short period before the fire, when the first convention hall began to fulfill the long=standing dreams of the Kansas City business community.

Grading

In the post titled, “Crossroads: Kansas City Builds an Economy,” we covered a bit about the efforts it took to turn Kansas City into a place physically capable of supporting a city-scale economy, beginning with the incredible street grading that occurred over several decades before and after 1900. The banner photo depicts two men on the north side of the Missouri River looking across to the bluffs on the south side. While this spot is actually a bit further east than the spot where Kansas City was born, it perfectly displays the massive limestone bluffs that runs all along the south side of the Missouri River in western Missouri.

The Commercial Club & E.M. Clendening

The post about the Commercial Club (Post #4, 6 /21/22) included a short biography of its long-time director who managed the Convention Hall Project, E.M. Clendening. Clendening’s life was one of great highs and lows. He had early success as a prominent merchant in Kansas City, but remained within the city’s circle of influence due to his long and distinguished time with the Commercial Club, even if he found himself more on the outer ring of that circle. This advertising card is very typical of the period, which present beautiful images of landscapes or floral arrangements, but many times had no image of the product – not unlike advertising and promotion of the current period.

Photos of the buttons the Commercial Club issued as promotion and fund-raising tools. “Come to Kansas City and Be Welcome” (left) buttons were issued to all members and others affiliated with promotion and operations of the 1900 Democratic Convention. “Good for One Share of Stock” with its individual number, was issued to one of the businesses or individuals who contributed funding or prizes to be used in fund-raising. Those who contributed wore them as a sign of civic pride – or seen another way, a not-so-subtle way of influencing others to be a part of the much heralded “Kansas City Spirit.”

The Exposition Hall

In the post, “Ink by the Barrel,” reference was made to the Exhibition events held in Kansas City prior to the Convention Hall idea took hold. Unfortunately, there wasn’t room for a fuller discussion of this period in the city’s history. While I hope to make that right in the weeks to come, for now, I wanted to include a few images to give a glimpse into the impressive scale and architectural treat the Exhibitions were, as well as their importance in establishing Kansas City’s first reputation as a gathering spot for national industry.

The poster for Kansas City’s inaugural National Agricultural Exposition and the depiction of its Crystal Palace to rival London’s of 1851 made a promise to visitors of something spectacular – a “45-day wonder.” It did not disappoint in its early years. But even in 1871, the first year of Kansas City’s exposition, such events were somewhat passe due in part to its limitation to a single event held once a year, and its focus on agriculture in an increasingly more modern and industrial world. Below, Kansas City’s Crystal Palace under construction.

Details of Frederick E. Hill’s original plans for the Kansas City Convention Hall

As was mentioned in the post, “Design & Construction,” (#8 in the 1900 Series, 7/19/22) the model Frederick Hill used for his design for the Kansas City Convention Hall was New York’s recently built Madison Square Garden. Kansas City’s version was unquestionably more modest in every respect, but it is generally an apt comparison because all of the civic halls that began springing up around the country – particularly in the emerging west – were modeled on that same general design. In this day and age, the basics of this new type of building were still being established – the breakout examples were still to come.

Even so, because the Convention Hall had such a remarkably short life, having Hill’s original drawings to review is helpful to making the building come to life in its own history.

(Right) The arena setting, the configuration used for the 1900 National Democratic Convention.

(Above) The Mezzanine Floor, which opened out on the west side to a roof-top garden (not shown) was designed to accommodate smaller groups in as wide a variety of configurations as possible. From left to right: The Banquet Hall, suitable for organization’s programs, large annual meetings or board of directors’ meetings, or private events such as wedding receptions; The Ladies Hall, with its small stage, is shown here set up for a small program or entertainment event; and The Armory Hall; so-named and perhaps dedicated to the use of the gun club members of the armory facilities in the hall’s basement.

The Short Event-filled Life of the Convention Hall

Even though the first Convention Hall was operational for only about 14 months, it had plenty of events of all kinds. In this post, (#9, 7/26/22) we covered some of the more interesting events, but these two images really capture something of the era, though not necessarily one of the city’s proudest moments.

Uriah Spray Epperson lived all but the first eight years of his life in Kansas City, was a self-made man who became wealthy in the insurance industry, and was one of the great civic leaders of his day. His particular passion for music led him to be a supporter of the Music Conservatory and other performing organizations in the decades around 1900.

But his interest also led him to form a minstrel show – a very popular form of entertainment in its day, but one for obvious reasons that is looked on with combinations of guilt, shame, repulsion, embarrassment, and regret, among other reactions. Its one saving grace is that Epperson’s Megaphone Minstrels were, as far as I was able to find, employed as entertainment for the purpose of fundraising for Kansas City’s large civic initiatives as well as smaller organizational functions.

The poster (right) shows the kind of promotional billboards often found paced on the sides of buildings or along fences. The black-face character is prominent in the poster, but programs for specific events don’t indicate the interlocutor segment of the classic minstrel show was a very large part of the Epperson show. This should be considered as more of a curiosity than any sort of absolution for the misrepresentation.

From the standpoint of the Convention Hall story, note that the date of the performance on the poster is April 3, the night before the great fire that destroyed the original hall.

The pages from a program (left) for the Epperson Megaphone Minstrels give a sampling of the men who were regular performers with the group. The Epperson group was an entirely volunteer group. In fact, part of the appeal of the show for locals was a chance to see men who were well known on the civic front perform their low-brow musical numbers and comedy sketches. This page shows 36 regular members of the Megaphone Minstrels.

(KC 1900 Series: # 9)

For those in the day-to-day trenches of it, the work on the convention hall had been a struggle to find time to breathe. The Convention Hall initiative had been announced in June 1897, but the fundraising work had begun some weeks before that. The site selection officially started that fall, but real estate deals had been proposed from day one. In the first quarter of 1898, the competition for an architect began, but the actual plan had been in the discussion since 1894, a plan suggested by the architect who was eventually chosen.

And so it was with the bookings. No need to wait until the hall was finished before starting to book acts. In fact, no need to wait until the hall was even started. As soon as the plan was established, there was plenty of regional and national interest in the hall. Eventually, thirty acts would appear in the Convention Hall between the time of its grand opening and its last performance the day before the fire. And while there was plenty of local groups who were ready to book – like the Priests of Pallas and the Epperson Megaphone Minstrels – the hall’s national exposure had attracted the interest of an artist whose music established a new genre that became the soundtrack of the era.

John Philip Sousa

Early in 1898, just as the committee was preparing to open up the design competition, J.M. Loomas, President of the Priests of Pallas came to see E.M. Clendening, Secretary of the Commercial Club. He brought a letter from the business manager for John Philip Sousa, arguably the most famous musician in America. The letter offered the band’s availability for the first week of October, during which Sousa and his band were willing to perform sixteen concerts – the equivalent of two per day, for the total fee of $6,000. This being early December, Sousa’s manager advised in the letter that the band couldn’t guarantee that availability until the end of January. Sousa was no longer affiliated with the U.S. Marine Band, but his own band, formed in 1892, was one of the more popular touring acts during America’s “ragtime” years.

Such enthusiasm there was among the committee for this idea that they wasted no time in advising Sousa’s manager of their interest. This would give the whole project a specific goal, a timeline for completing the hall by early October, a full ten months later. Sousa could be the centerpiece of the hall’s grand opening, and the whole affair would coincide with other fall festivities, most importantly the Priests of Pallas celebrations.

In the end, the building was not ready by October 1. The committee had to renegotiate an agreement with Sousa, but as it turns out, to the betterment of both parties. Sousa offered a couple of options; in the end, Sousa would only do one concert, but something he had never done before – a dance. The Sousa band would provide music for a ball, to be held as part of the hall’s opening day festivities.

As the Kansas City Star touted when the event was announced a month before opening:

The first town on earth to dance to Sousa’s music, played by Sousa’s band under Sousa’s direction will be Kansas City… Think of all that glory crowded into one night!…Sousa’s band, under John Philip Sousa himself, will begin a new career here that night. It will be a new experience for that greatest of all bandsmen to lead his own musicians through the intricacies of dance music while dancers really dance to it.

Subscribers & Prizes

On New Year’s Day, 1899, the hall served as the venue for distributing the gifts to the hall’s subscriber donors. Among the some 8,000 gifts given away over three days were several heads of prize winning cattle, a couple of thoroughbred race horses, real estate, plans and materials for the construction of a house, a piano, a billiard table, typewriters, a buggy, a bicycle, various pieces of jewelry, and one hundred dollars each in gold and silver. The gifts were somehow assigned to individual subscribers – presumably by a ticket-like number on each certificate. The Committee had to follow that format, cumbersome though it may be, because to have a random drawing for the prizes constituted a lottery in the State of Missouri, where lotteries were prohibited.

The first day the drawing was a celebration. The Third Regiment band played in between sessions of drawing tickets. Short tours were provided by the hall manager, Mr. Loomas. But the hall was very much incomplete, so on days two and three of the drawing, the tickets were selected amidst the sounds of construction all around the building.

Epperson’s Megaphone Minstrels

In the relatively short life of the first Convention Hall, there were plenty of other entertainments held in the hall both before and after its official opening. When it was clear that the hall wouldn’t be ready for the Sousa Band by early October, there was still the need to continue to raise money for construction and, soon, operation. Instead of the Sousa band, the Committee looked to a tried and true – and highly popular – entertainment at the time, the minstrel show. In this case, it was a local group known as Epperson’s Megaphone Minstrels, funded and partially led by U.S. Epperson, a prominent Kansas City business man.

Minstrel shows are most often associated with whites performing in black face. In some shows, everyone on stage was in blackface. While there were notable differences from show to show, the minstrel show followed a general form. An interlocutor was part emcee for the change of scenes and acts, and part straight man for the jokes. The show moved briskly through the vignettes, and featured all types of music of the day, particularly ballads, ragtime and spirituals, and almost always a few tunes crafted for the occasion. Minstrel shows could have a hundred or more performers, all men. Most of the performers were part of the orchestra; however, because amateur shows like the Epperson show were rooted in the membership of social or professional clubs, there were performers in the orchestra whose instruments were rudimentary and rhythmic – triangles, tambourines, wood blocks, etc. Everyone, including the orchestra, performed on stage. The interlocutor and the acts performed in front of the orchestra. E.M. Clendening, the Secretary of the Commercial Club was also one of the interlocutors for the Megaphone Minstrels.

Then there were the “end men” who, in blackface, performed the role of clown, making fun of the black race or making fun of the white race’s misperceptions about blacks. There’s no question that at their core minstrel shows were a vehicle for disparaging the black population; after all, the name “Jim Crow” originated in association with a buffoonish Negro character in a minstrel show. But it’s also interesting to note that minstrel shows regularly included barbs and ridicule directed toward many issues of the time. For example, some would knock the aristocratic North for its corruption and its condescending, patriarchal view of blacks. Others might possibly mock Southerners’ for what was characterized as their parochial attitudes, or even lampoon topics having nothing to do with race, like women having the vote. And throughout the history of minstrelsy in America, in addition to all-white shows and mixed-race shows, there were all-Negro minstrel shows as well. When vaudeville began in the early 1900s, blacks who could not get hired for vaudeville moved to the minstrel show, increasing the number of shows in the country. In the surviving pictures of the Epperson show, only the two “end men,” were in blackface.

Uriah Spray (U.S.) Epperson had grown up in Kansas City, and came from a modest background. He was 39 during the period of the Convention Hall opening, and was in the middle of a 22 year career as general manager of the Fowler Meat Packing plant. The years of his wealth building were still in his future, when he would create both a fire insurance underwriting company, and a land investment company. But his real love and the beneficiaries of his philanthropy late in life was the cultural life of the city. Epperson had formed the Megaphone Minstrels around 1895, as a means to raise money for Kansas City’s new parks system. The Megaphone Minstrels appeared in the hall, such as it was, on October 1, 1898, the original opening date. In April 1899, the Megaphone Minstrels performed for what for was billed as an “Easter Monday Ball,” underwritten by William Rockhill Nelson, for the support of proposed public baths, which were never completed. The Minstrels were deployed similarly once it was known the building would not be ready for John Philip Sousa by October 1.

Opening Day, February 22, 1899

The day so long in the planning finally arrived. Opening day would truly be a full day of excitement, with two Sousa concerts, and the all-day chance to roam inside the new building to see what all the money, the effort, the time, and the good will of the community had bought. There were 10,000 in attendance for the afternoon show, and another 12,000 again that evening. The best sense of what those ceremonial moments must have been like was expressed in some articles and speeches left behind. The Kansas City Star wrote:

“As John Philip Sousa stepped out of a small door in the rear of the sounding board of the huge Convention Hall shortly after 2 o’clock this afternoon, he stopped for an instant, and on his face was written a look of mixed astonishment and admiration. It was not the wild burst of applause that caused his expression of wonderment, for that is an old story to the great bandleader, but it was because he saw before him a sight that even to a man of Mr. Sousa’s wide experience was never duplicated. He saw a hall interior, the like of which is not found in the United States, unless it be Madison Square Garden, in New York. He looked upon thousands of faces and double that the number of hands, every pair trying to outdo his neighbor’s in his appreciation of the occasion. He beheld a large number of American flags that were probably bigger than anything ever brought together under one roof for decorative purposes, and palms that had they been gathered together in one bunch might have reminded one of a tropical jungle.  And this made John Philip Sousa stare. Why not? Even he never saw its like before.

Charles Campbell, President of the Convention Hall Committee of the Commercial Club, made an address to the crowd, in which he said, “You all look happy and contented, and well you may be, for today you are by your own fireside, sheltered ‘neath the friendly roof of your own home. It is yours to keep forever. The bondholder shall never have it, for not a dollar of debt is against it. It stands as a fitting monument to the progressive and generous people who, by their contributions, whether one dollar or thousands of dollars, have made it possible for you all to be here today at the opening of this grand building. You have built better than you knew.” Then finally, Campbell made the official pronouncement. “And now to Kansas City, the peerless Queen of the West, in Commerce and Trade, Agriculture and Mining, Manufactures and Machinery, Architecture and Building, Science, Art and Music; to the garden fields to the north and east, the rugged hills and forests to the south, the golden prairies to the west; in peace and prosperity, to charity and good will to all mankind, and to “the Stars and Stripes Forever,” this building is most respectfully dedicated and now declared formally opened.”

Mr. Campbell bowed and left the stage. Then Sousa waved his baton, and the band began “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” when from the topmost point of the sounding board directly above his head a large, fluffy national emblem unfolded itself from a decorated box where it had been concealed, until it hung there with each red and white bar and star and blue field displaying its own individuality, while around it, on all its edges, sparkled red, white and blue lights. At the same moment Sousa raised his baton and really before the flag’s colors could be made out the hall was filled with the strains of the stirring “Star Spangled Banner.” The effect was instantaneous. Men and women stood and waved hats and handkerchiefs until the air was filled with waving black and fluttering white.

Other Events

The announcement of the planning of the opening day events was likely at least part of the reason that, almost immediately after that, the Committee started having to field requests for future dates. Again, the reality of the demand for the hall was well ahead of the committee’s plan for its future. Once the Convention Hall project was announced to the public, requests for future use of the hall came pouring in. The Convention Hall Building Committees minutes during late 1899 and early 1900 were replete with requests, not all of them honored. The hall was not yet fully completed, so there were legitimate accommodation issues. There were also issues of scale – some proposed events were too complex, or anticipated large attendance, and until the Committee had some experience actually in the hall, they were reluctant to book such risky events.

Then there was the matter of rates. Rates had generally been established, but it seems, according to the minutes, that every organization that requested dates in the new Convention Hall wanted to renegotiate the rates, and not just the dollar amount. Some wanted it free, some wanted to have to pay direct expenses only, others agreed to pay the rate if certain accommodations were added, as in one case, a special floor. Still another, a nonprofit, wanted to borrow 200 chairs at no cost. The sheer time it was taking for the appropriate Convention Hall Building Committee members to try to define policies, and to be present, debate and then counteroffer was eating up scarce time and risking forfeiting income. By December the board had made the decision that rates were to be straightforward and consistent.

The occasion of that decision was, ironically, a request from the fire department. The city’s chief of the Fire Department, George Hale, requested a rental price reduction for “entertainments” to be given by the department for two days in mid-December. He was denied. The Universities of Kansas and Missouri asked to hold their November 30, 1899 game in the hall, but they were denied as well, and ended up playing at the old Exposition Park.

Gleaned from the Convention Hall Committee’s financial report at the end of 1899, and miscellaneous minutes of the committee, the following are some of the other events that took place between opening day and March 30, 1900, just five days before the fire.

(Banner photo: The full compliment of the membership of the Epperson Megaphone Minstrels, on the performance stage of the Convention Hall.)

(KC 1900 Series: # 8)

With the site selection completed, the Convention Hall Committee was ready to precede with design. In late December, 1897, the committee made public its invitation for any local architect to submit a design. The design process the committee would follow was somewhat unusual. The submittal was required to include floor plans, elevation drawings, a description of recommended materials, and general estimates of material and labor costs, an overall production schedule and a more detailed schedule tracking when the various trades – masons, plumbers, electricians, carpenters, and such – would be on the job site. These plans would be the starting point for future bids from those subcontractors.

Where the process was untypical was in its architectural fees. Instead of a flat fee, the top four submittals would be awarded prizes – $500, $250, $150 and $100. In a speech E.M. Clendening of the Commercial Club made a couple of years after the hall was built, he recommended this process to the City of Indianapolis, where he was speaking to the local Commercial Club regarding their interest in a convention Hall.

“Now, you may want to say to your architects as we did, ‘We agree to pay the successful architect $500 in cash, to give him $2,000 in stock and $2,500 more as the work progresses,’ so that, no matter what the building might cost, his entire compensation would be $3,000 in cash and $2,000 in convention hall stock. The ordinary fee on our building would have amounted to something like $10,000.”

This was possible because the committee had limited its applicants to Kansas City architects, and the reason for that was to capitalize – or some might say extort – the local talent who would feel it part of their civic obligation to perform their professional services at a significantly reduced fee. At least, that’s what William Rockhill Nelson wrote in an editorial in the Kansas City Star early January 1898, when the architects were still in the early stages of drafting their designs. Nelson was particularly peeved that members of the architect’s guild had banded together to protest the fee structure. “No man need apply a moment’s thought or an instant of endeavor to this project unwillingly. It continues to be, as it has from its conception, a voluntary enterprise…But to promptly league together a whole guild to compel the adoption of the most expensive methods of carrying out the project – that is another matter and one which calls for public protest.”

The architects wanted payment as it had traditionally been calculated – five percent of the cost of the building. But they offered what they believed was a concession, by agreeing to accept eighty percent of that five percent fee in cash, and the remainder in stock. The architects who coalesced around this complaint were not listed in the newspaper accounts, but architect Henry Van Brunt had made a public statement in favor of the architects that prompted W.R. Nelson’s response in the quote above. Though the request (demand) was turned down by the committee, Van Brunt was still interested in doing the work, and was among those who bid on the project regardless.

On March 15, 1898, the seven submitting architectural firms arrived at the Commercial Club to make the presentations of their proposals to the committee. One firm having submitted two plans, there were eight plans under consideration. Kansas City was fortunate to have a strong field of professionals in the construction industry. Many of the architectural and engineering firms, as well as the materials providers and master tradesman had come to Kansas City for work on the Hannibal Bridge, and the significance of Kansas City in that industry would continue to rise into the 20^th century. The mid-1880s brought many soon-to-be notable architects to Kansas City, including several among those submitting designs for the Convention Hall.  The more recognizable names who submitted plans for the hall include the following:

Louis Curtiss (age 33) was a relative newcomer to the field. He had only recently stopped working for Adriance Van Brunt and started his partnership with Frederick Gunn. Over the next two decades Curtiss’ diverse designs included the Boley Building (12^th & Walnut), Mineral Hall on the campus of the Kansas City Art Institute (4340 Oak), the Hotel Baltimore (11^th & Baltimore), the Bernard Corrigan residence (55^th & Ward Parkway) and the Folly Theatre (12^th & Central).

Frederick Gunn (age 35) was Louis Curtiss’ partner in the Convention Hall project. Gunn would gain a solid reputation that led to a long career. Before his death in 1959, Gunn had designed General Hospitals 1 and 2, the City Market, and the Jackson County Courthouse. He is also the architect of a half dozen or so prominent homes in the Country Club District.

Adriance Van Brunt (age 62), part of the Hackney, Smith & Van Brunt team, would be most remembered as one of the first members of the Parks Board, and an architect associated with public structures, including the entrance to Swope Park, and the former stables building at 39^th and Gillham Road. He also was the architect for some of the early high-end residential housing in the Country Club District. Adriance Van Brunt had a brother John who was also an architect, but neither was directly related to either Henry Van Brunt (below) or his son, Courtlandt Van Brunt.

Henry Van Brunt (age 62), partner of Frank Howe in the firm Van Brunt & Howe, had come to Kansas City in 1887 from Boston, with the flood of eastern investment. The partners designed the Bullene Moore & Emery Building (later Emery Bird Thayer at 10^th & Grand), the Kansas City Club (12^th & Wyandotte), the Coates House (10^th & Broadway) and the August Meyer residence (now Vanderslice Hall at the Kansas City Art Institute, 4415 Warwick.) Henry Van Brunt would soon gain a national reputation as one of a team of designers of the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, a team that included some of the most famous names in architecture: Daniel Burnham, Louis Sullivan, and Frederick Law Olmsted. In 1899, Van Brunt served as the President of the American Institute of Architects. The Van Brunt & Howe firm submitted two plans for the Convention Hall competition.

Frederick E. Hill (age 38), a Minnesotan by birth, first practiced in New York then came to Kanas City in 1885. Operating as a sole practitioner, his local work included the 12-story New York Life Building (9th & Baltimore), generally considered to be Kansas City’s first skyscraper, and the first building with elevators. Hill also designed Oak Hill, the baronial home of William Rockhill Nelson of the Kansas City Star, the home of Judge Edward Scarritt (3500 Gladstone Blvd.,) and the Westport City Hall.

Three other sole practitioners also submitted designs: George Matthews, William W. Rose, and C.P. Schmidt.

Each plan was allowed only twenty minutes for its presentation. But in the end, the interview process lasted more than six hours, until 8:30 that evening. The vote resulted in two firms tied for first – Frederick E. Hill, and Van Brunt & Howe. But after the second vote, the chosen architect was Frederick E. Hill. Three additional votes were taken to individually award the prizes for the design competition. Second prize went to William W. Rose, third to Van Brunt & Howe, and fourth to Gunn & Curtiss.

The next day, Frederick Hill arrived at the Commercial Club at the request of Secretary E.M. Clendening for the public announcement of the architect selection, and the awards for second, third and fourth place. Newspaper reporters had been gathering in front of the Commercial Club all morning. The reporters were invited into one of the main rooms of the Club, where Clendening announced the names, and unveiled the drawings of all the plans. The press took photos or made sketches of the drawings.

Two days earlier, the committee had received a letter from the local office of Studebaker Manufacturing, offering its show room windows as a display venue for the winning drawings, and further included an offer of a $100 donation for the Convention Hall fund. The notion of a public display hadn’t occurred to the board until that letter arrived, but they immediately agreed it was a good idea. But an earlier disagreement about Studebaker’s expectation of compensation for items which the club considered donations left the club disinclined to take their offer. Rather, after some discussion, the committee chose to award the honor of hosting the drawings to someone who had already supported the convention hall effort, an early supporter who had been generous and required no conditions. In fact, this person had given the fund its very first check to deposit. So the drawings were displayed in the windows of Mary McDonald’s Popular Price Millinery House, the very same Mary McDonald who had sent in the letter with the $100 first check. The Popular Price Millinery House would display the drawings in the windows of her shop at 1013 Main.

The site and design now settled, there was about six months remaining to complete the hall before October 1, the deadline the Commercial Club committee had set for itself. Ultimately, that date would be extended into February of 1899, but not until the October 1 date had passed. Still, in the early days, under the assumption of a six month deadline, there was much to be done before the public would see any physical progress at the project site. Demolition, soil tests, utility connections and then grading needed to be done. Meanwhile, offers to supply materials or provide technical services were already pouring in, offers meant to subvert or leap over the required bid process. And the bid process couldn’t begin until all the legal needs of the committee were attended to – certifying them as the agency authorized to redevelop the site, and then all the administrative tasks involving contracts, titles, permits, and insurance.

Originally, the Convention Hall Company (the name of the newly formed legal corporation) had been insured the hall for $ 110,000. Shortly after the original October 1 deadline passed, and realizing the final construction costs would be greater than originally planned, the board of the Company voted to increase the insurance to $150,000, the purpose being, “to have our property so insured that in the event of a big conflagration, the policies would represent their face values.” They further authorized the building manager to purchase an office safe (no more than $200) for the purpose of storing the books of the company, the stock certificates, and other valuable papers, in the event of theft or fire.

Here are some of the main characteristics in Frederick Hill’s design for the Kansas City Convention Hall as described in the Kansas City Star:

• Location: Northeast corner of 13^th & Central
• Dimensions:
  • 62,275 square feet
  • Footprint: 198.33  feet on 13^th Street; 314 feet on Central
  • Height
    • to roof apex: 75 feet
    • to roof edge: 40 feet
• Seating capacity: 5,000 main floor; gallery/amphitheater seating, 16,000. Total = 21,000
• Two stories, styles:
  • 1^st Story: Renaissance
  • 2^nd Story: Peristyle (open colonnade)

• Exterior finish: Native stone, cream brick, terra cotta
• Roof: Copper and composition
  • Encircling roof garden, 25 feet wide at north & south ends; 40 feet wide at east & west sides:
• Assortment of smaller rooms for event service, small meetings, ladies meeting room, etc.
• Arena floors are removable, adjustable
• Inclined walkways to substitute stairways in patron seating areas
• Porte cochere entrance
• Full service kitchen and banqueting hall
• Estimated building cost (March 1898): $100,000

********************

The site and design now settled, there were about six months remaining to complete the hall before October 1, the deadline the Commercial Club committee had set for itself. Ultimately, that date would be extended into February of 1899, but still, in the early days, under the assumption of a six month deadline, there was much to be done before the public would see any physical progress at the project site. Demolition, soil tests, utility connections and grading needed to be done. Meanwhile, offers to supply materials or provide technical services were already pouring in, offers meant to subvert or leap over the required bid process. And the bid process couldn’t begin until all the legal needs of the committee were attended to – certifying them as the agency authorized to redevelop the site, and then all the administrative tasks involving contracts, titles, permits, and insurance.

Originally, the Convention Hall Company (the name of the newly formed legal corporation) had insured the hall for $ 110,000. Shortly after the original October 1 deadline passed, and realizing the final construction costs would be greater than originally planned, the board of the Company voted to increase the insurance to $150,000, the purpose being, “to have our property so insured that in the event of a big conflagration, the policies would represent their face values.” They further authorized the building manager to purchase an office safe (no more than $200) for the purpose of storing the books of the company, the stock certificates, and other valuable papers, in the event of theft or fire.

The bid process for all the materials required – steel, stone, lumber and wire and so much more – took most of the summer. But in the short term, construction consisted mainly of the tedious process of preparing the site. On August 6, 1898, the Convention Hall’s commemorative corner stone arrived at the construction site pulled behind a festooned wagon hitched to a two-horse team giving the appearance of a very short and slow parade that still drew a fair-sized crowd. Made of dressed limestone, measuring seven foot square and three feet thick, the stone was inscribed simply “Corner stone for the Convention Hall Building,” but no date mentioned in the account provided by Clendening’s report two-and-a-half years later. That report mentions the Convention Hall directors had decided against holding a public event when the stone was put in position. They may have felt that way, but clearly Clendening didn’t, for he defines the exact time and day the stone was positioned, officially (if arbitrarily) marking the beginning of construction as Thursday afternoon at 5 o’clock, August 12^th, 1898.

While all of the exterior construction and most of the interior finish was completed by December, there were a seemingly endless list of details to attend to inside that kept the project going longer than the public could appreciate, as they gazed at the exterior of a seemingly finished building. But on February 21, 1899, 344 days after Frederick Hill’s plan for the hall had been chosen and the real work of building the Convention Hall began, 163 days after the cornerstone was placed, and  144 days after the original opening day target, the new Kansas City Convention Hall was ready for its grand dedication then next day.

Kansas City Builds an Economy

(KC 1900 Series: # 2)

Here where these rocky bluffs meet and turn aside the sweeping current of this mighty river; here where the Missouri, after pursuing her southern course for nearly two thousand miles, turns eastward to meet the Mississippi, a great manufacturing and commercial community will congregate and less than a generation will see a great city. 

Senator Thomas Hart Benton – 1852 speech in Kansas City

Kansas City’s rose up from its geographic influences – from is geology and topography, to its anthropology and economics. The subject of the history of the Convention Hall begins there as well. Were it not for its geography, the Convention Hall might have been built in another location entirely, forever affecting the city form built after it. More importantly, geography was at the center of what made Kansas City grow, and made it worthy of and ideally suited for a Convention Hall.

There is much Kansas City history to tell from its earliest beginnings to the late 19^th century, and many fine sources of that history. But thankfully for us all, I’m content with providing a general reminder of three periods in the city’s history that help explain the connection between those early years and the ultimate manifestation of a Convention Hall.

Early 1800s:

There had been native peoples here forever. Even when Lewis and Clark floated by in 1804, there were already men who had explored the west for their personal interests in trade or trapping. The mission of the Corps of Discovery was greater. Lewis and Clark came to map the west for the government’s interests in the future. Many settlements along the Missouri River were established because of the travels of the Corps, but Kansas City was in the perfect position to capitalize on the “opening of the west” before the others. The spot that would become Kansas City was the first major place for trade, with its confluence of the Kansas and Missouri rivers. Having established a foothold, the founders of Kansas City started making the local economy a place that took the greatest advantage of its location. Kansas City became what St. Louis has claimed – the gateway of the west. If St. Louis was a gateway, it was a gate to a single path west, the Missouri River. Kansas City was the gate that swung wide, and opened the northwest, southwest and far west to the agents of change. The gate swung wide to the east, too, happy to help bring the wealth of the new world to the old.

1830 to 1860s:

The era of the Overland Trails further fueled the area’s growth, and turned Kansas City into the ultimate “jumping off place.” The Santa Fe Trail opened up, and a vital trade route that now connected the United States and Mexico ran right through Independence, then Westport. Gold was discovered in California, and almost every overland route to the gold fields came through Westport, where prospectors spent their last cent with certainty of its ability to grow into a fortune. The territories of the northwest that became Oregon and Washington were opened to settlement, and families came through in the thousands, again, loading up in Kansas City. All told, about a half million people traveled through this area on their way west in the twenty years before the Civil War.

Every event that had contributed to the growth of Kansas City and helped insure the city’s place as a center of enterprise gave the community every reason to believe it could continue to grow well into the future. Except for one thing. There was no more room to grow. The city had become so crowded with its success that it was crammed between the south bank of the Missouri River and the foot of the limestone bluffs just a few hundred south. There was only one way to go – up. Up to the top of the bluffs.

The ravines that runoff had carved in the bluffs over millions of years were only a start. What were needed were ravines thirty, forty, fifty feet deep, in some places more. The city began the arduous, almost impossible job of claiming the high ground of the bluffs by clawing up and then through them. They started slowly at first, in the 1850s, then delayed during the Civil War, revived after the war, continued through the end the 19^th century. Kansas City’s new nickname became Gullytown.

The city first budgeted $10,000 for improvements, to dig below grade to create Main Street. The edge of the bluff near the river was graded down, and the levee widened and paved for the distance of one quarter of a mile. Within the next three years, Second, Third, Fourth and Fifth Streets were improved; Broadway and Wyandotte, Delaware, Main and Market (Grand Avenue) Streets were graded from the river south to Fifth Street.

To provide a more contemporary account of this effort, I have included some excerpts from the narrative of this period found in Carrie Westlake Whitney’s Kansas City: Its History and Its People, Vol. I, 1908 (a separate KCB story on Whitney can be found here.) Whitney’s account provides more detail on the grading project than any account I’ve seen to date. And while some modern-day citizens might bemoan the loss of these natural outcroppings, it’s interesting to note what Whitney notices from the viewpoint of the day:

Obstacles in the shape of elevations or depressions were met at every turn, tons and tons of rock have been torn from the crest of the hills and used to fill up the valleys and ravines, and out of the chaos a beautiful city with magnificent thoroughfares, has arisen. The cliffs and valleys that were left undisturbed later were utilized to beautify the driveways and boulevards… In looking backward through the years to the dim horizon of fifty years ago, one can scarcely realize the wonderful transformation that has taken place, topographically, in Kansas City. It required wonderful perseverance and energy to make Kansas City sightly.

1870-1890:

This final era of Kansas City’s pre Convention Hall period began around 1870, even though the construction of the hall wouldn’t get truly underway for about twenty years. To begin, in 1870, the Hannibal Bridge was built by the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad Company, and for the first time, a rail line crossed the Missouri River. For several years any commodity needing to cross that divide traveling in either direction had to make its way through Kansas City to do so. And because of that, Kansas City became an early home to the railroad industry as it conquered the west. And then it built a stockyard, second only to Chicago’s, which in turn justified building a new Union Depot in the West Bottoms. From which the growing independent interurban lines began to form a network that helped to define Main Street as just that – a larger version of an “everytown” main street.

So began Kansas City’s life as a true crossroads, a place that connected the corners of America – the cultured east with the western wilderness, the industrial northeast with the agricultural southwest. Whether by river or trail, or rail, Kansas City was a physical crossroads. Whether to trade, to make, to buy or to sell, Kansas City was an economic crossroads. And those fortuitous intersections brought investment interests from the financial capitals of the eastern seaboard.

Of course, Kansas City was infamously known as a rowdy, open town. That rough side was part of the attraction for some, but for most, it made them cautious. The city struggled with that image for years, and in the early 1890s, the city was at a turning point. But turning from what to what? In Kansas City’s case, it’s from the type of city it had become while no one was much paying attention, to the city it imagined itself to be, or could be, and for some people already  heavily invested in Kansas City’s future, the city it simply had to be. A producer of wealth and influence.

And so the civic discourse began on how to remedy the situation and redraw the city’s image in the eyes of the country. It didn’t take long for the convention hall idea to rise to the top of the list, where it found the influential champions it needed, those who recognized the opportunity for all its virtues. The city had a well invested and successful old guard, fresh eastern money, political leverage, and the economic foundation of the railroads and the stockyards. What they wanted and needed was a combination civic monument, world-class spectacle, and most importantly, an icon of Kansas City’s economic success and its vision for the future.

And what better to fit that bill than a public building, a building that could house the spectacle of a circus, grand concerts by the likes of John Philip Sousa, industrial expositions highlighting the city’s economy, or conventions bringing industry leaders or political candidates and their entourages of power brokers? Nothing, that’s what. Nothing could be better.

Banner Photo: Bird’s Eye View map of Kansas City, circa 1870